Mazars is an internationally integrated partnership, specializing in audit, accountancy, advisory, tax and legal services[1]. Operating in over 90 countries and territories around the world, Mazars draws on the expertise of more than 44,000 professionals – 28,000+ in Mazars’ integrated partnership and 16,000+ via the Mazars North America Alliance – to assist clients of all sizes at every stage in their development.

One of the organizations’ biggest member firms is Mazars in Germany: an innovation frontrunner within the Mazars Group. Within eight months, Mazars in Germany has established a fully personalized no-code environment and citizen development implementation program. As a result, Mazars has a scalable citizen development program, over 20 citizen developers, and nine business applications.

The right solution: citizen development

In an uncertain, complex, and constantly changing business landscape, Mazars is facing the universal challenge of finding or creating digital solutions to securely and efficiently counter complex and short-term problems. Meanwhile, these applications have to be delivered at accelerating speeds with less available resources.

The Digital Solutions team at Mazars in Germany sought a solution and found citizen development. Through application development by business users, the application development process is IT-sanctioned and done in collaboration with or led by the relevant subject matter experts. Thus, those experiencing the problems are quickly building and implementing their solutions. This offers a huge competitive advantage.

Mazars in Germany went through a meticulous selection process regarding their low-code / no-code (LCNC) development partner. Various elements were crucial for the support of their citizen developers, such as:

● Ease of use
● Provisions on templates
● IT governance
● Good documentation and training videos
● Simple integration into different infrastructures
● Style in Mazars branding
● Secure and separate environments and fast support

Betty Blocks ticked all of these boxes for Mazars, providing a secure and easy to use platform for their business users.

“As a citizen developer, the Mazarian of tomorrow will be able to implement its own application, independently crafting the solutions to their own problems.” - Andreas Steuer, Manager Digital Solutions

However, the implementation of LCNC citizen development is not just about a new technology or familiarization with the platform, but involves a new way of work. Mazars knows that this requires structural, practical, and governmental changes in the organization. Let's take a look at how they did it.

A center of excellence

Mazars’ LCNC development started with their Digital Solutions team, who were trained, guided, and supported by the Betty Blocks consultancy team over the course of a couple of weeks.

The two teams established an internal Center of Excellence: a collective composed of the knowledge holders and first-users of the platform. Roles within the team include product owners, product managers, change managers, communication experts, and no-code developers, as well as close IT guidance. The Digital Solution team built and launched various applications, intended for both internal use and customer-facing applicability. Further applications to optimize and facilitate internal processes, as well as to improve customer support are currently being developed. With Betty Blocks’ support, they are working towards a knowledge and skill level to independently support their citizen developers.

Mazars is thus taking advantage of a key benefit of the Betty Blocks platform: it can be used either as a no-code or low-code platform. Through this capability, the platform is suited to each user regardless of their experience or capabilities. With a center of excellence established, strategizing, and building around citizen development began.
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“As a citizen developer, the Mazarian of tomorrow will be able to implement its own application, independently crafting the solutions to their own problems.”