As enterprise IT continues to invest in SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) technologies, what will IT staff and manager jobs look like five years from now? We predict that responsibilities will shift from supporting technology platforms and transactional operations tasks to working closely with other departments to improve the digital experience for customers.
Impact of DevOps and Autonomics
By 2020, DevOps will realize its full potential. IT staff will have new and unique opportunities to deliver innovation, create customized “as-a-service” solutions, and put speed and value back to their businesses instead of being burdened with maintaining and supporting technology platform uptimes. They will have a lens into customer needs and how to solve business problems by working closely with marketing, sales, finance, supply chain and other business functions.
Additionally, resourcing staff on repeatable and transactional operations tasks will be less common in the future enterprise, especially when those tasks can be performed by intelligent, autonomous systems with little or no human intervention. The focus of IT manager will shift towards enhancing the end-user experience to ensure customers interact seamlessly across channels with your business and your brand.
The IT workers of tomorrow will also be called upon to focus their skills and knowledge of technology on increasing and retaining loyalty with existing customers, and making the brand and their business services attractive to new ones, all based on a technology backbone that is seamless, smart and practically invisible.
Finally, the enterprise of the future will focus on how it can maximize the quality and velocity of its digital interactions with their customers. We are already seeing roles like Chief Digital Officers and Chief Automation Officers appearing on leadership teams around the enterprise as a testament to how important those functions will be to the business of the future.
Department Spotlight: Quality Assurance
We’re already seeing these shifts play out in the quality assurance (QA) and testing space. Our annual survey of 1,560 CIOs and IT and testing leaders from 32 countries found that of the testing budget for new developments, 53 percent is consumed by new digital technology solutions – mobile, cloud, business intelligence and business analytics. Compare this with the 17 percent consumed by testing for other front office solutions, and 29 percent for ERP and legacy back office solutions.
The majority (35 percent) of budget dedicated to new digital technology solutions is spent on mobile and front office (customer channel) solutions. This is indicative of the growing importance of mobile, and the need to deliver a seamless experience for a customer as they interact with a company on multiple platforms.
The implication for IT managers in the QA space is that they need to collaborate more closely with other departments to bring QA out of its silo, and measure testing’s impact on digital initiatives and innovation. As my colleague David Newberry wrote in a blog post, this is why Capgemini is structuring QA projects to business outcomes in order to enable continuous innovation and drive down the cost of quality.
IT Managers as Air Traffic Controllers
What enterprises are seeing as digital disruption today will be part of the integrated fabric of business in the future. These executives will be charged with maximizing digital applications and ensuring they stay on the right flight pattern. These leaders will essentially be the air traffic controllers and be guided by data insights to make strategic decisions and ensure those applications keep to their flight pattern. IT managers must keep these shifts in mind and adopt a forward-thinking technology vision to remain relevant to the needs of your business.
Gerry Leitao is VP of managed services delivery & platforms at Capgemini. You can connect with him on LinkedIn. Read more Capgemini blogs here.
