According to Wired.com, 93% of businesses indicate there is a skills gap. The bigger problem? It’s only growing worse.  Read the report

After all, IT must keep the business technology running smoothly, while keeping up with changing trends. They must be development experts. They’re in charge of data security. They must integrate disparate data sources. They must make sense of rapidly expanding data volumes.

Unless the organization can afford to hire experts in every area, it’s a near impossible task. For that reason, we’ll see more of these functions move to outside providers, letting IT leadership focus their core strengths and efforts on creating business value.

And here’s an excerpt from a recent Forbes blog post by several members of McKinsey’s research teams:

“Today we stand on the edge of another disruption. This one is again driven by technology. The technologies that automated millions of routine transaction and production jobs are now rapidly encroaching on higher-skilled-skill interaction jobs as well, that is to say, jobs which require personal interaction, problem solving and a range of critical-thinking skills.

The information tools that helped improve productivity are now being used to disaggregate jobs into specialized tasks that can be scheduled down to the hour of a workweek with flexible labor and can increasingly be done remotely.

Because technology changes jobs across sectors and geographies, employers around the world need to rethink whom, where, and how they recruit; how they can use technology to substitute for skills, not just personnel; and how they adapt their ways of working. The jobs the US economy has been creating in the past two years are very different in nature from the ones that were lost in the recession that followed the 2008 financial crisis.

The labor market itself is now quite different. Technology is not only automating ever more jobs and increasing the skill gaps for the jobs that remain; it is changing the very nature of work and giving us ever less time to adapt.

The contradictions and gaps in labor markets won’t resolve themselves. Governments, companies, and individuals will need to reset the way they think about labor markets, where to find workers, and the relationship between technology and work. They will have to focus on developing the skills and institutions needed to keep up with changing technologies.

Companies will also need to explore new pools of talent and update their recruiting and training practices in order to respond to the labor challenge in an agile way.”

This is where we can help. Call or email and we can start a conversation about your most critical custom applications development needs or even ETL Plus* to get you better connected to your data sources.