A contentious talent war continues across the spectrum of IT engineering. This reality will only grow in pressure, complexity, and impact in the coming years as organizations look to deliver more value to their customers and partners by diverting highly sought technical staff away from routine, mundane tasks that machines, software, and automation can otherwise accomplish.
Case in point: Organizations have automated between 20% and 40% of business processes according to CIOs. This includes supply chain, manufacturing, finance, procurement, marketing, and research and development. (1) And, as reported by Gartner, organizations expect to increase their reliance on external consultants as greater urgencies and the accelerated pace of change widen the gap between digital business ambitions and available internal resources and capabilities. (2)
The top talent-related Future of Operations predictions by IDC for 2022 and beyond includes interesting observations about digital engineering: (3)
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- By 2023, only 25% of G2000 companies will move beyond using their digital engineering organization to enforce IT policies in operations.
- By 2024, 35% of G2000 companies will use their digital engineering capabilities to sell remote operations, data, and other services to peers, partners, and customers.
- By 2025, 60% of companies will use remote expertise to support operational staff with AI and knowledge management.
This all points to a growing trend: changes in staffing solutions could look like those of the cloud operating model. Specific resources are identified and selected from a talent provider on an as-needed basis for as long as necessary. Organizations return the resources to the talent pool once the activities are completed and the business objectives are met.
Connecting these points, most large organizations will use external consultants to develop their cloud strategy over the next few years. “Staff skills gaps, wage inflation, and the war for talent will push CIOs to rely more on consultancies and managed service firms to pursue their digital strategies,” said Lovelock in a CRN article. (4)
Lovelock added in a Computerworld article, “unfortunately, CIOs are at a disadvantage when attacking top talent—there is more money and better opportunities within [technology service providers] for top IT skills. To maximize the productivity of their existing IT staff, CIOs will be outsourcing more to free up time, training existing staff in the desired skills, and hiring consultants to fulfill critical skilled roles. This will last at least through 2022.” (5)
Without making the transition to a modern, composable organization, IT runs the risk of becoming compostable—where IT services and resources are considered assets that can be recycled.
Citations:
1 – “The CIO Revolution: Breaking barriers, creating value – C-suite Series: The 2021 CIO Study,” IBM, November 2021
2 – “Gartner Forecasts Worldwide IT Spending to Grow 5.1% in 2022,” Gartner, January 2022
3 – “IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Future of Operations 2022 Predictions,” IDC, November 2021
4 – “IT Market To Hit $4.5 Trillion In 2022 As Services Surge: Gartner,” CRN, Published January 24, 2022, Accessed on January 27, 2022
5 – “Talent war to push CIOs toward consultancies, managed services in ’22,” ComputerWorld, Published January 20, 2022, Accessed January 27, 2022