Don’t Let a Skills Shortage Derail Your Digital Transformation Journey

Throughout my professional and military career, I’ve seen various threats evolve, from mission-critical military strikes to enterprise cybersecurity attacks. However, in this era of chronic skills shortages, rapid automation, and digital transformation, a lack of IT expertise poses a real challenge for businesses. And with technology products and solutions growing more complex every day, the ability to transform into an agile organization hangs on developing the next generation of skills, closing any talent gaps, and future-proofing your organization’s potential.

Without the right IT skills in place, an organization’s ability to meet its customer’s needs can be quickly and easily compromised. In fact, 58 percent of the workforce needs new skills to get their jobs done¹ — and IT leaders are combining, developing, and hiring talent according to their organization’s needs to meet demands for critical and emerging skills.

To understand the IT skills crisis and how it impacts an organization’s digital world, consider these challenges from IDC’s recent study:²

• By 2025, 90% of enterprises will be affected by IT skills shortages, costing approximately $6.5 trillion globally.
• IT workers focused on digital transformation are predicted to account for the bulk of all IT roles by 2024 and almost 70% of all IT employment by 2025.
• Skills are foundational to the success of digital transformations—they account for more than 40% of a successful transformation investment.
• To monitor highly distributed and global networks and analyze vast amounts of operational and customer data in real time, organizations are turning to automation, including machine learning, analytics, and insights. And to meet increasing demand, IT teams now require highly trained AI/ML experts to support foundational IT activities. However, learning challenges shaped during the pandemic are making these roles even more difficult to fill in a timely manner.

It’s clear that, as business models evolve to address dynamic marketplace shifts, digital initiatives have turned into digital imperatives. In order to succeed, CIOs and CEOs must also evolve essential skillsets to deliver resilient, transformative digital organizations.

Timing is everything – with the right resources

So how can companies find the right IT skills to do the right work at the right time?

Access to tools and resources to perform more efficiently and effectively is just a click away in today’s organizations. They can range from automated and intelligent insights, alerts, and real-time health checks to on-demand learning resources such as playbooks, webinars, and best-practice documents.  While these resources can help IT teams work more knowledgeably, the resources that support them must also evolve.

In IDC’s whitepaper, Enabling IT Resilience and Agility with On-Demand Skill, they foresee that telemetry will play a significant role in supporting IT teams for the next evolution of automated services that utilize AI and ML. By combining these techniques with leading expertise delivered at the right time, IT teams can ensure that designs and implementations are optimized for success.

Shorten the skills gap with ongoing, expert guidance

Ultimately, digital transformation is about more than just the technology you implement. It’s about investing in a culture of learning to build resilient, adaptive, and transformative IT in your organization. It’s about strengthening your bench and supporting the leaders who will take care of your workforce for years to come.

To harness the power of these values, Cisco Customer Experience (CX) Business Critical Services offer tools and resources that allow you to optimize and de-risk with the benefit of expertise delivered across the IT lifecycle. Our trusted experts are powered by our proprietary analytics, insights, and automation to create more engaging digital experiences while guiding you to close the widening IT skills gap and accelerate your digital journey.

From supporting next-generation technologies to industry-leading technologies and best practices, we’re committed to shaping the future with you. And to do that, we’re continuing to evolve our service capabilities, so you gain the expertise you need, when and where it’s needed, to enable an agile and resilient workforce.

Download the IDC white paper

¹ Gartner, 2020
² IDC, 2022

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