The IT industry never stands still. It is ever evolving with exciting new developments coming up every day, thus, making the future look bright for tech companies and the people involved. However, with the recent changes comes a set of challenges that the industry has to deal with, with agility.
IT leaders continually contend with pandemic-related disruptions, economic volatility, climate and sustainability concerns, employee retention issues, change management problems, geopolitical instability, and much more. These dynamics are reshaping how IT leaders think to reorganize their concerns.
Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world, uncertainty and unpredictability have ruled. However, it is believed that the IT sector will continue to grow in the post-pandemic world.
As per reports, the IT industry spending is estimated at 5.3 trillion US dollars (approx.) in 2022, and the IT service market revenue is projected to reach US$1,114.00 billion in 2022.
Tech budgets are expected to increase, implying expanding opportunities to invest in the digitalization of the economy. This will usher in several options and initiatives in the IT sector that tech organizations should take advantage of to beat the existing challenges.
Challenges in the IT Industry: Areas of Concern
● Innovation – Irrespective of the size of an organization, business innovation challenges pose essential hurdles to overcome. Innovation is a long-term investment, and often impatient leadership stands in the way of getting impactful results. Funding is another big challenge in innovation. Companies must invest time, energy, and money to learn whether an innovation is desirable. Another biggest business innovation challenge is a silo-driven culture that isolates ideas and blocks creativity from translating into successful initiatives.
● Climate Consciousness – Most technology companies acknowledge the threat of climate change in their financial reporting. As the dependency on electrical devices and technological innovation increases, the production of e-waste automatically rises, leading to significant environmental damage. Therefore, sustainability in technology has become a highly significant topic for the tech industries.
● Competition – The business environment is full of unprecedented challenges. Especially the IT industry is under the scanner of constant changes, so the challenge for organizations lies in managing this change in response to the changing environment. The pressure of competition in business is felt at the organizational level and individual level as the company staff/employees constantly compete to manage work-life balance and stay productive.
● Manpower – The next decade will likely experience the profound impact of skilled manpower, but organizations must address specific concerns on priority. These include failure to weigh long-term objectives; lack of sensitivity to problems, rapid changes in technology and organizational environment; the complexity of the organization; lack of measures of accomplishment; failure to act; and lack of effective communication.
● Learning and Development – The biggest challenge that haunted most IT organizations just after the pandemic hit the globe was how to run their businesses virtually. Although everyone involved, from the management to the employees, took the rightful initiatives to make it a success, the crux of the burden fell on the learning and development (L&D) teams. Some of the biggest challenges facing L&D teams are:
→ Change management
→ Company culture for a virtual workforce
→ The hybrid workplace
→ Using data to better L&D decisions, etc.
● Growth and Expansion – The fundamental goal for any business is to achieve sustainable growth and expansion, but some obstacles cross the path. Some of these challenges are:
→ Managing uncertainty
→ Complex work culture
→ Diverse customer needs
→ Meeting intelligence requirements
→ Keeping the supply chain running
→ Ensuring inventory management
→ Dealing with competition
→ Dealing with new compliance responsibilities, and much more.
The IT sector is the backbone for the global economy to prosper exponentially. Despite its challenges, the industry is constantly improving as new opportunities and initiatives are coming through to deal with the roadblocks.
How to Identify Opportunities in the Face of Adversity?
The right way to identify opportunities is to focus on your offerings and their potential for business growth. The scope to innovate your own tech business and drive growth can be achieved through:
→ Watching, identifying, and analyzing other innovative companies
→ Current market trends like virtual service and training
→ Obtaining feedback from existing customers
→ Addressing frustrations, complaints, and concerns
→ Aligning with your staff to understand which opportunities are best suited for your company’s purpose
Climate consciousness of organizations can bring lots of opportunities that are twofold:
→ Integrating resource efficiency in commercial construction with the emerging market
→ And conserving energy within the existing infrastructure of the developed countries
Seeking opportunities in competition is the right way to overcome competitive challenges. SWOT analysis enables organizations to emphasize their strengths, minimize weaknesses, neutralize threats, and exploit opportunities. Knowing where your competitors fare against your strengths and weaknesses will help organizations to develop the right opportunities to manage things more efficiently
The scope of human resource management is very wide and should consider the personnel, welfare, and industrial relations aspects. After the pandemic hit the world and a massive digital transformation, people’s personal and working lives changed.
But could L&D respond to that change with the required agility and speed?
Although not, the good news is that L&D has a great chance to create genuine values by overseeing a portfolio of learning services and collaborating with skilled vendors interested in producing capable digital workers.
Many factors may thwart business growth and expansion, but on the positive side, there are several opportunities to find the right solutions. For example, introducing automated payroll software, establishing healthy dialogues with business clients, focusing on business intelligence (AI and ML) to maintain efficiency and productivity, real-time inventory management, and more.
What IT Initiatives are taken to beat the Challenges?
● Organizations must apply open innovation in various areas with varied goals and outcomes. Use the open innovation platforms or become a pioneer in open innovation to find better solutions. According to a report, the entire 5G deployment in Europe for innovation platforms is expected to reach 251 billion Euros compared to 42 billion Euros. Another defining initiative is to adopt the ‘Break the Silos’ mentality and embrace radical innovations.
● Several tech giants across the globe supported green technology by signing a pact, “European Green Digital Coalition’, to digitally transform critical economic sectors and help the world reduce carbon dioxide emissions. According to the reports, the pact was endorsed by United Nations Environment Programme and spearheaded by the European Commission.
To raise climate consciousness within the working environment, the IT sector can take sustainable measures such as:
→ Reducing energy consumption
→ Investing more in renewable energy
→ Reducing waste
→ Optimizing employees’ transportation
→ Choosing sustainable suppliers
→ Greener infrastructure and equipment
→ Raising awareness among employees and stakeholders
→ Promoting an environment-friendly work environment
● The best way to handle industry competition is to take the right initiatives to sustain and retain your position. This includes
→ Identifying a need within the industry and meeting the same with a product/service
→ Improving on existing product/services
→ Focusing on the needs of employees and customers
→ Exploring partnership opportunities
→ Targeting new markets, and so on
● Some of the initiatives organizations can take to improve office culture and inculcate a healthy work environment include:
→ Employee Health Initiative – Supplying organic lunches, hosting fitness challenge programs, and setting employee sleep goals.
→ Kindness initiative – Institute recognition of employees daily, give employees compliments and criticisms, and encourage them with props.
→ Work-life balance initiative – Provide half-day Fridays, flexible work hours, work from home, time off to keep burnouts at bay, etc.
● Some of the best initiatives that L&D can take include:
→ Choosing a modern learning platform
→ Professional training organizations
→ Training and development books
→ Hosting industry training conferences
→ Incorporating social media as the learning platform
→ Including blended learning
→ Embracing talents with recognition and rewards, and much more
● Some of the best initiatives that L&D can take include:
→ Choosing a modern learning platform
→ Professional training organizations
→ Training and development books
→ Hosting industry training conferences
→ Incorporating social media as the learning platform
→ Including blended learning
→ Embracing talents with recognition and rewards, and much more
● What can you do to ramp up your business growth curve?
→ Increase your organization’s visibility and strategic alliances
→ Invest in real marketing
→ Direct employee focus on sales
→ Optimize every cash flow transaction
→ Introduce automation consistency with growth rates
→ Introduce new enhancements and products every month
→ And aggressively leverage the new markets and new channels to propagate your products and services
While trends are a way for IT professionals to seize the opportunity in the growing industry, challenges can also present possibilities for growth. Challenges reflect the current needs of the IT industry and how relevant skills have a chance to fit in and find growth instantaneously. Therefore, looking at challenges as opportunities is just a matter of perspective to measure the future of IT industry.
Conclusion
The year 2022 anticipates the market for IT services to generate US$1,114.00 billion in revenue despite the effects of the pandemic. IT initiatives to serve the trends and combat the challenges will contribute to global business growth and increase employment opportunities. Tech businesses with the capability to keep up with the growing demands would likely thrive and benefit from the opportunities. Additionally, IT professionals who can serve as solutions to the ever-increasing challenges of the IT industry have the potential to pave a remarkable journey in the industry.
About Techwave
Techwave is a global leader in providing engineering and IT solutions and services that are transforming digital breakthroughs. With a broad range of technological services, such as enterprise resource planning, application development, analytics, digital, and the internet of things (IoT), we firmly believe that we can help customers reach their full potential and expand their market value.