Rapid digital transformation pressure challenging for IT Teams

The digital is ever-evolving and there is no chance of slowing in the near future, not even the undercurrents. With an increasing demand from consumers, companies are in strife to deliver at a bolt. Especially with the onset of the pandemic, workplaces have evolved rapidly which came along with employee expectation of digital-first. The drive is towards connected experience to achieve productivity and retain talent. This brings in heavy pressure on IT departments to rejig operations extremely fast, which is also faced with the difficulty of keeping talent in tech capacities.

“Keeping up with digital transformation (32%) and keeping talent in technical roles (26%) are the two biggest challenges their (IT professionals) organisations face today,” stated a study by Ivanti.   

“IT departments are viewed as critical to an organisation’s growth and business strategy by 61% of respondents. However, despite this high level of support for the IT department 72% of respondents reported losing team members with 41% of respondents citing a high workload as the top reason for losing team members,” it further added.  

The Covid-19 crisis has made it necessary for organisations to rethink their operations and transform them. The further they head towards it the more productivity will come in.  

“That evolution has not always been a seamless or elegant process: businesses had to scramble to install or adapt new technologies under intense pressure,” said a McKinsey report.   

According to the report, the result has been that some systems are clunky. The near-term challenge, then, is to move from reacting to the crisis to building and institutionalising what has been done well so far. For consumer industries, and particularly for retail, that could mean improving digital and omnichannel business models. For healthcare, it’s about establishing virtual options as a norm. For insurance, it’s about personalising the customer experience. And for semiconductors, it’s about identifying and investing in next-generation products. For everyone, there will be new opportunities in M&A and an urgent need to invest in capability building.  

Also read: IoT trends that will dominate 2022

In a manufacturing company scenario, no one could imagine a remote working concept. However, with the onset of the pandemic remote working had to be enabled to a great extent. We know that technology has come far and enormous tools are available to bring in digitisation, but it needs to be noted that digitisation cannot happen at a sharp switch.   

“Even if you bring in all the technology required, it cannot be adopted overnight. Employees need to go through upskilling to implement them,” said Ravi Kalla, Head, Information Technology, Process Automation & Instrumentation, Anthem Biosciences Private Limited.   

“There should be vision and foresight and good planning to mitigate the technology hurdles. Proper digitisation requires mature models. For instance, we had all the layers- lab, IT, quality, manufacturing- remotely accessible,” he added.   

Ivanti, points out that the other reason for IT team member attrition include- Unrealistic expectations placed on the team (34%); Lack of executive support (32%);  Remote work was not a possibility (28%); Executive hesitancy to adopt automation (26%); Lack of critical technology to effectively do their job (24%). Also, Routine manual tasks consume IT and service desk resources and limit IT team members’ ability to move ahead with higher-impact strategic projects.   

“The vanishing of location parameter has also contributed to higher attrition. People can work for global companies sitting at their native places with 10X salary,” commented Kalla.