The most important IT and tech skills

Digital transformation is a fundamental mega-trend of our time. Data-driven approaches are revolutionising one industry after another. Innovative technology enables companies to offer completely new products and services, superior efficiency and unimagined customer centricity. Consumers also reap the benefits of this: they can choose from an ever-growing range of products and services while enjoying a personalised customer experience never seen before.

In order for companies to be part of this digital success story, however, tech leaders must also prepare their workforce for the future. The carousel of relevant technologies is spinning faster and faster, and new requirements for tech skills and IT knowledge are constantly emerging. Which trends will be particularly important for your IT team in the coming months? We’d like to present the five most important ones to you here.

The thing that underpins all digital business models is data. And with data streams growing exponentially, the risk of misuse also increases. When digital operations become core business processes, data security and cyber security take on paramount importance. This is especially true in light of malicious actors who are becoming more professional and using the same new tech paradigms as businesses.

One of the most momentous developments in recent years has been the triumph of artificial intelligence and machine learning. In the meantime, AI applications have migrated to consumers’ smartphones and have become commonplace in companies. The extreme dynamism of this field demands a lot of time from IT teams. At the same time, AI services are becoming more convenient and cheaper to use, e.g. via the cloud.

However, new challenges regarding the transparency of models and algorithms are also emerging. Typically, AI today operates as a non-transparent black box, which doesn’t exactly inspire trust among users and customers. To ensure the success of the technology, significant effort must be put into issues such as ethics and explainable AI, i.e. explaining the AI decision-making processes in a comprehensible way. Regulatory factors are also playing a role here. Another trend area is generative AI, which is currently causing a stir and will turn many areas completely upside-down.

The great migration to the cloud has been underway for some time, but it does raise new issues and present some difficult challenges. Having one platform alone is simply not enough for most companies, which is why multi-cloud scenarios with different providers are becoming increasingly common.

But this can lead to high costs – and it also increases complexity in a way that potentially runs counter to the very point of the cloud paradigm, namely that it should be easy to use. To manage these aspects, sophisticated approaches such as the super-cloud are becoming more and more appealing: an additional layer that unifies and centralises the multi-cloud.

Automation is a major area of IT. Nowadays, approaches such as robotic process automation and process mining are optimising many business processes. At the same time, more and more energy is being directed towards automating IT itself, helping to reduce the necessary specialised knowledge on the part of users. Operating the system, however, requires appropriately qualified staff.

IT automation affects all the other issues mentioned here, as it enhances their respective benefits. The focus is on the continuous rollout of software functions, automated testing and the integration of security aspects into the development processes (continuous integration/continuous deployment, DevSecOps). Container orchestration also helps to reduce IT complexity. The automation trend is especially promising when it comes to the provision of machine-learning applications through standardised stacks.

Alongside digital transformation, sustainability is another mega-trend of our age. In the face of climate change, this topic is of almost existential importance for society in general and therefore also for companies. The combination of the two mega-trends of digitalisation and sustainability represents a decisive lever for overcoming this challenge.

This leads to an increased demand for IT expertise in the area of sustainability – not only in terms of building “green” IT infrastructure; but also in terms of using digital technologies to optimise the business itself in a sustainable manner. Analytics solutions can be used to record the carbon footprint of operational processes and reduce it effectively. The ecological profile of products and services is improved through data-driven circular concepts. Efficient supply chain management enables a more transparent supply chain, which, among other things, prevents human rights issues with suppliers. In addition to IT expertise, operational know-how is also necessary for implementation.

The skills requirements of companies today are enormous – ever-increasing and constantly evolving. The emergence of new technologies means IT skills are becoming obsolete faster and faster. Given the acute shortage of skilled IT workers, organisations are facing a serious dilemma. This is why flexibility will become a crucial soft skill for IT employees in the future, who will have to be dynamic enough to learn new approaches over and over again.

Against this backdrop, companies should establish a strategic, skills-centred workforce planning system in order to be future-proof for the years to come. By upskilling measures and partnerships in the ecosystem, businesses can effectively increase the pool of candidates. Experis, the IT staffing professional, is an experienced partner in this regard. Experis offers comprehensive e-learning tools, supports the upskilling of internal and external staff, helps you overcome short-term staff shortages and encourages long-term skills management. This ensures that your company has access to the necessary IT expertise – a crucial requirement for high-growth, digital business models.

Get in touch now to discuss your requirements.