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The concept of having business users create their own applications is powerful and potentially off-putting at the same time.

Sometimes it is best not to tell the user that they are, in effect, programming. MS Excel is the perfect example of a palette on which very powerful applications are created by people who would profess to know little or nothing about software.

We often use the term Subject Matter Experts to define the people we built Mapit Designer for. These are the people who often carry a lot of the organisation's knowledge around in their heads, the "go to" resource for a particularly tricky question.

Using Mapit these experts can transfer their knowledge to the organisation in a structured process map that is easily followed by anyone who can use a browser.

The discipline required of the subject matter expert is understanding the questions that are asked in order to access the knowledge. Often these questions are the most asked of the customer service or other parts of the organisation.

By asking customer support - or simply noting down the question every time the phone rings - the doorway to the information can be found. From there the subject matter expert uses the power of Mapit Designer to structure a discovery path through the information using a question and answer format.

The joy of Mapit is that it is an easy to use product that doesn't once refer to such potentially troubling concepts as Business Rules Engines and Workflow Mapping - let alone HTML, XML and other technological acronyms. Instead the user simply creates a "script" that can be easily deployed on the organisation's website or intranet.