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Forget about “This Old House” and weekend do-it-yourselfers (DIY) wielding hammers and saws. The DIY movement has now reached information workers. Nearly one in five of them has built or customized a Web app or software for work purposes without support from IT, a new survey reveals.
The result of this DIY push is faster help for customers, improved productivity and better collaboration among employees, a survey of more than 900 information workers sponsored by software provider Intuit showed.
The survey found that 50 percent of information workers now turn to online databases and Web-based productivity apps, instant messaging platforms, video chat services and social networks to solve their own business problems.
Although many businesses recognize the productivity benefits of empowering staff to choose their own technologies to help customers and rethink business processes, there are still pockets of resistance: 35 percent of businesses still do not enable or encourage employees to create solutions independently.
“There’s a fast-growing population of do-it-yourself app creators in every organization,” said Allison Mnookin, vice president and general manager of Intuit QuickBase. “Th