Demand for IT skills to rise as companies go digital in post-covid era
- As companies look to re-invent themselves to stay relevant in a post-covid business environment, skills related to digital transformation will be in high demand
Bengaluru: The demand for information technology (IT) skills is expected to significantly rise in a post covid world as even traditionally non-technology companies have been forced to embrace digital transformation.
Digital is no longer the prerogative of IT companies as it has percolated to organisations across sizes and sectors, said experts.
“In the next few quarters, lot of the hiring in IT will come from non-IT companies which have undergone digital transformation due to the impact of the pandemic…Even a traditional retail outlet will now like to have a digital presence because of new norms like social distancing etc.,” said Lohit Bhatia, president, Indian Staffing Federation (ISF).
“Post-covid, many small & medium retail businesses are planning to restructure and innovate for higher productivity, efficiency and profitability including automation of various processes and digital transformation,” said Anne Soumya, HR director, Adecco Group India. “We are already seeing a disruption in this trend.”
As they embark on digital transformation, hiring of IT talent is expected to increase in businesses such as retail and payment gateway companies that have seen a spike in business during the nationwide lockdown, Soumya added.
As per an Ernst & Young report, the covid-19 crisis has made many organisations realise that they were “underestimating” the speed of technology and “underinvesting” in technologies and tools that can enable them to operate in a digital world. “The faster companies can apply technology, the faster they can create an advantage.”
Visionet Systems India, for instance, has helped over 34 clients move to digital during the pandemic. “The companies that went digital were from sectors like retail, manufacturing, insurance, mortgage services, banks, financial institutions, and chemical,” said Alok Bansal, managing director, Visionet Systems India. Similarly, Vuram Technology Solutions has also helped several companies undergo digital transformation since the covid-19 pandemic began.
As companies look to re-invent themselves to stay relevant in a post-covid business environment, skills related to digital transformation will be in high demand, according to staffing firm Collabera Technologies.
Collabera estimates that some of the skills that will be in high demand post June are “digital transformation experts, data scientists & statisticians, IT security & network architects, edge computing, microservices, virtualization, cloud, business intelligence, artificial intelligence/machine learning, big data consultants, and software application developers.”
Analysts believe the post-covid world is an opportunity for businesses to become truly digital. “Digital has hardly scratched the surface, with 80-90% of the companies doing only basics like moving to cloud, mobile apps, or putting their products and services in website…The main concept of digital business is merging the physical and digital world into something that creates new revenue streams, new customer segments or drive radically new customer experience,” said Arup Roy, research vice president, Gartner.
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First Published:5 Jun 2020, 02:21 PM IST
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