Seismic Shifts Challenge CIOs Goals: IT executives challenged with meeting business objectives while addressing dizzying levels of change on numerous fronts must feel like they are walking a high wire during an earthquake. Attaining many of their goals hinges on understanding how trends now confronting the Information Technology marketplace will affect their ability to find the highly sought after talent or knowledge they ll need to create and sustain a competitive advantage. This paper will provide insights on how IT leaders might modify their operations to navigate through the turbulence. 1 How a handful of solutions are reshaping the chase for talent and knowledge As has been widely noted, IT is under more pressure than ever to drive business performance. A heightened focus on quantifiable business results as measured by faster times to market, higher levels of customer satisfaction, reduced costs, higher productivity, etc. means that IT managers must be willing to employ new approaches to getting the most from people both inside and outside their organizations. The strategic use of contingent work forces and alternatives for optimizing outsourcing come more to the forefront. This paper will discuss solutions to some of the most significant issues confronting IT decision-makers: The strategic importance of outsourcing and contingent staffing Winning the talent war through improved operational and hiring processes. Leveraging the strength of experienced partners to make the most of current trends
WINNING THE TALENT WAR: THE RIGHT PEOPLE WITH THE RIGHT SKILLS AT THE RIGHT TIME IS CRITICAL TO STAYING COMPETITIVE Given the nature of the changes in technology over the past few years it s no surprise that the most highly sought after skills by IT organizations relate to mobility, Web development, security, Java and.net software development, business analysis, and project management. With growing demand for talent chasing a rather static supply, attracting and keeping skilled individuals is all the more difficult. Let s take mobility for instance. The research firm IDC estimated that IT spending would total more than $2 trillion in 2013 and those projects around mobility would represent almost 60% of the growth in that spending. In its top 15 emerging technologies to watch between now and 2018, Forrester Research found that mobile applications and mobile platforms took the top two spots. A handful of technologies are the focus of much of the nation s IT activity and the people with the skills surrounding these technologies are in great demand. This is unlikely to change anytime soon. Forrester anticipates that new platforms evolving from the hot technologies will foster more change pointing out that by 2016 there will be 760 million tablets in use and almost one-third will be sold to business. The race to grab talent with skills in the hottest technologies is already on. In Washington D.C., technology companies employ 1 in 10 of the area s private sector workforce with startups aggressively searching for people with the newest skills. The race to grab talent with skills in the hottest technologies is already on across the country: Washington DC: technology companies employ 1 in 10 of the area s private sector workforce Silicon Valley, CA: IT specialists looking for fulltime employment often receive multiple offers Boston, MA: Some IT managers refer to the widespread competition as a talent war managers that don t act fast find their candidates hired from under them. Some IT managers in Boston refer to the widespread competition to attract IT personnel as a talent war. This chase for talent is only likely to become more pronounced in the coming years. The most successful companies in the talent wars will learn to tap talent in creative ways because not having the right skills at the right time has far reaching implications- which is probably why Gartner has attracting and retaining workforce as one of the top ten Top 10 CIO Business Priorities in 2013. Gartner 2013 Top 10 CIO Business Priorities: #8 Attract and Retaining the Workforce In a recent survey of more than 500 U.S. IT and business managers and other international IT managers, CompTIA, a non-profit IT industry association, found that shortcomings in IT skills had far-reaching negative organizational effects. Ninetythree percent of the IT and business managers surveyed indicated that their organizations suffered a gap in the skills their IT employees possessed and the skills their companies required. Eighty percent of the surveyed organizations said that their business operations were impeded by gaps in the skill sets of their IT staffs. The areas most affected were staff productivity, customer service and engagement, security, speed to market, and profitability. Although nearly 6 in 10 organizations indicated their intent to address their IT skills shortage through staff training, 4 in 10 IT and business managers had no confidence that training would solve their skills shortage issues. 80% 93% of IT and business managers report there are skills gaps inside their IT departments affecting at least one area of business of employers believe there s a gap between existing and desired skill levels among their IT staff, particularly in areas such as: IT workers earned an average salary 106% greater than surrounding Virginia s average private sector wage. In Silicon Valley IT specialists looking for fulltime employment often receive multiple offers. Hiring security/ cyber security network infrastructure big data 2
In a nutshell, market forces have increased the need for on-demand skilled IT talent. The trend toward justin-time workforce strategies has driven many firms to become adept at engaging provisional talent aimed at fulfilling short-term needs and to find those people quickly, more and more companies leverage partners who specialize in finding IT talent. It is anticipated that the use of contingent workers will only grow. Statistics gathered by Staffing Industry Analysts indicates: Last year more than $2 trillion was spent globally on contingent/temporary workers About 16% of an average large company s workforce is contingent, compared to 11% seven years earlier. An average of 2.95 million temporary and contract workers were employed per business day by U.S. staffing companies during the third quarter of last year up 4.3% over the 3rd quarter of the preceding year. Having the right skills at the right time can mean the difference between finishing first or being one of the runner-ups. Working together the two firms revamped their hiring processes: Much of the time-consuming front-end legwork including job posting, resume review, and initial phone interviews would now be handled by Randstad Technologies. Speed interviews with a handful of candidates would be conducted by Randstad Technologies to further pare down the list to one or two of the most qualified candidates. The selected finalist candidate(s) would interview with a panel of the client s staff. The goal was to provide the client a 360 view of the applicant. The streamlined and more efficient hiring process has resulted in filling over 130 positions in an extremely talent hungry marketplace. Relying on hiring processes that might have worked at one time can handicap a firm s ability to acquire the talent it needs to succeed. SOMETIMES, A REVAMPED HIRING PROCESS IS NECESSARY TO WIN THE TALENT WAR The most successful firms today in acquiring the IT talent have often given their entire recruiting & hiring process an overhaul. Companies just can t afford to let the perfect candidate get scooped up by another firm because their internal process is too inefficient or takes too long. Not too long ago, a $10 billion health care company with an annual IT budget of $30 million found themselves struggling to find enough skilled people to keep up with their ever-expanding workload. When they turned to Randstad Technologies for help their CIO had already identified three issues that were hampering their recruitment efforts: 1) an interviewing/hiring process that distracted IT managers from working on core activities, 2) competition for the skills they needed was fierce and was only likely to get worse, and 3) their internal review process leading up to making job offers was so bureaucratic and cumbersome that they lost talented recruits before they could make an offer. 3
A FLEXIBLE MODEL BREEDS RESULTS With the growing responsibilities for business outcomes, companies are now more interested in sharing the ownership of outcomes with experienced partners that bring the right talent, leadership, methodologies, and tools to the relationship. Managed Services Much of the focus on IT outsourcing used to be on reducing costs. Although still important to many firms, emphasis has shifted to a more strategic approach. Outsourcing is now seen as a vehicle to increased agility, access to hard-to-find talent, consistency in the quality of outcomes, and improved customer satisfaction. It s less about the need to save money and more about enhancing the firm s strategic position. Outsourcing IT A strategic approach Vehicle to increased agility Access to hard-to-find talent Consistency in the quality of outcomes Improved customer satisfaction Extrapolating from our own experience and incorporating the insights of others familiar with how outsourcing is changing, here are some of the most significant IT outsourcing trends: Midsize companies are already spending a higher percentage of their IT budgets on outsourcing than their larger counterparts are. The pace at which smaller and mid-sized companies embrace IT outsourcing will continue to grow. This is attributable to a number of factors: The drive to leverage complex tools such as those related to big data and business intelligence to acquire or maintain a competitive advantage. The need to understand and manage mobile technology will drive smaller firms to look for help. Increasing IT operational demands are distracting their more limited resources away from core business functions and attaining their goals. Because businesses are so dependent on technology, relying on high quality, resource-rich, trusted service providers reduces the risk of catastrophic failure or inaccessibility to data and/or applications. The reliance on their IT outsourcing partner to provide complete solutions of bundled professional services and thought leadership becomes more prevalent. Increasing demand for IT outsourcing is driving more firms to enter the market. Customers recognizing the levels of risk associated with their IT activities will devote more energy to due diligence and assertive service level agreements. The trend toward outsourcing custom development and infrastructure management will continue to grow as firms offload more non-core IT functions. Project Outsourcing The emergence of new technologies along with a scarcity of certain skills and the need for urgency is persuading some firms to rely on outside teams consisting of people with deep domain expertise in specific areas of IT. These teams are usually handed a discrete portion of a multifaceted project or a project in its entirety. A Statement of Work (SOW) often developed collaboratively with the organization providing and managing the team, clearly specifies the project deliverables, milestones, and budget. Benefits of using outside teams for projects: Flexibility Experience working collaboratively Proven methodologies Quickly adapt to changing requirements Comfortable in environment with tight deadlines Retained knowledge management ensures project continuity There are a number of advantages to using expert teams in times of rapidly evolving technologies and economic uncertainty: Teams are flexible, able to add skills quickly when needed for as long as needed. Members are usually experienced in working 4
collaboratively and understand the importance of communication and project management. Teams are agile in that they can quickly adapt to changing requirements. The types of personnel on expert teams are experienced and comfortable working in dynamic environments with tight deadlines. Highly specialized experts that would be difficult for most companies to identify can be brought in for extremely short durations, which would be impractical or exorbitantly expensive for firms to do on their own. Key project knowledge is retained within the team as individual team members change ensuring project continuity. Most firms find they lack the experience, know-how, and processes to quickly create and manage these types of teams and rely on firms that regularly perform such services. WHEN THE PROCESS IS THE PROBLEM An ungainly process can make even good people look bad. Take the IT service desk for example. Because the service desk is the face of IT to its users, its performance can color the overall perception of IT throughout the organization. No doubt, problems sometimes stem from having people mismatched to the necessary tasks but in many cases operational processes are the root of the problem. Although the issues highlighted here apply to the IT service desk, many of them are relevant to other IT operational processes. A list of the most common problems confounding service desk performance includes lack of knowledge or lack of access to knowledge that would lead to incident resolution, non-existent or inconsistent gathering of feedback from users, erratic assessments of root causes of problems, lack of accountability for a variety of functions, failure to formalize follow-up communication with users, failure to understand which metrics are important and to gather them the list could go on but the point is that attention to the process could often reduce turnover and costs and improve outcomes, customer satisfaction, and ultimately profitability. Our own experience helping scores of clients proves that by applying industry best practices to service desk operations and management, performance can dramatically improve. Focusing on the elements that foster success analyst training, knowledge management, continual service improvement, etc. can transform lackluster performance into exceptional outcomes. The same rigor, when applied to other IT processes can attain similar results. Sometimes it s the people but sometimes it s not. CLOSING THOUGHTS For many IT organizations, improving business outcomes, fast and nimble response to change, and establishing and maintaining a competitive advantage heavily relies on people and processes. Although this isn t new, the tumultuous and cyclonic state of technology development and adoption, coupled with lingering economic torpor, complicates and magnifies their importance. Understanding options for confronting and leveraging the most significant trends the scarcity of talent in the leading-edge technologies, refined models for employing people and resources outside the organization, access to just-in-time teams of experts, and introducing process best practices can mean the difference between dominating the market or being dominated. For more information on any of the topics contained in this paper, or to gain instant access to case studies that detail solutions to the types of problems described in this paper: visit us online at www.randstadtechnologies.com call us at 1.800.427.1910 5