How do we avoid being stopped by the lack of Digital Skills? | Episode 2

06/08/22 • 37 min

In this episode, Frank is speaking with Dene Palmer from Formpipe which is a provider of Premium business software for mid-sized to large companies and public organizations wanting to excel in the digital era.
These days, that means data is core part of a business and customers have a constant need to transform in an ever-changing digital landscape. Clearly, that puts high demands on their suppliers to stay ahead of the Digital Skills game.

You ́ll learn how Formpipe navigates in this era, and listen in on a talk about Cloud Skills in general.

The central concern of this talk is Skills Shortage. The demand and requirement for Cloud Skills is increasing and everyone is struggling to find people with the right skills. ?

From on-prem to SaaS
Formpipe has been transitioning from a company that primarily delivered On-Premise solutions. Now, the core business is based around SaaS solutions and that puts Formpipe on an internal digital transformation journey.

With the Cloud transitions come a whole new range of Skill requirements, including new needs for security, architecture and DevOps Skills.

Customers are just moving to the cloud in larger scales now. They don't want to maintain their on premise solutions and deal with manual upgrades etc.. There's definitely a customer demand that is accelerating, but there are also benefits for suppliers to accelerate their own internal cloud journeys.

The real problem with Cloud Skills
Technology is not the limiting factor to growth anymore, new tech is acquired with the swipe of a card. Skills are the limiting factor. You need Skills to get advantages from technology, that has always been the case, so why is the needs for Skills such a pressing issue now?

Dene raises a point about the cloud being limitless. The way cloud technology develops is continuous, there is more shared infrastructure and several different skillsets required. There is simply a demand for 15-20% new Skills ongoingly now, and not every 4 years when an upgrade happens. So how do we avoid being stopped by the lack of Skills?

Can we retrain existing resources or do we need new?
The answer falls on choosing a hybrid strategy, by training BOTH existing resources AND acquiring new talent based on their fit to the culture and not on their experience. The benefits of a mixed team of experienced senior profiles and graduates are multiple. Formpipe has found that grauduates hired based on culture rather than talent can be trained to do anything, and where they might lack technical experience they are gifted with new ways of thinking that provides other benefits. They are not constrained by what they already know.

Senior profiles have the experience to be experts in Incidents for instance, and to remain calm and productive regardless of the circumstance which are also core skills of equal significance.

Both profiles do need ongoing training. It's not difficult with the right person to train them in Cloud technologies, there is a lot of knowledge out there. It's how you organize the content to avoid time wasted, that is key.
Click the play button to learn how a very successful company like Formpipe make digital skills work, and join the conversation with Readynez at [email protected].
References

You ́ll learn how Formpipe navigates in this era, and listen in on a talk about Cloud Skills in general.

The central concern of this talk is Skills Shortage. The demand and requirement for Cloud Skills is increasing and everyone is struggling to find people with the right skills. ?

With the Cloud transitions come a whole new range of Skill requirements, including new needs for security, architecture and DevOps Skills.

Senior profiles have the experience to be experts in Incidents for instance, and to remain calm and productive regardless of the circumstance which are also core skills of equal significance.

Previous Episode

Organizing Learning & Development for Digital Skills with SimCorp | Episode 1

In this episode, Frank is speaking with Kenn from SimCorp, one of the world’s leading providers of integrated investment management solutions, about building a scalable learning organization that makes Digital Skills work for the business.

You ́ll learn about their new way to organize learning and some of the considerations in a never-normal Digital Skills reality.

Regardless of the Digital Skills in question, there is a recipe for success with Digital Transformation, and as SimCorp share their thoughts, you'll also get Frank's weigh-in:

In Frank’s experience as a CEO of Readynez, we need large-scale, programmatic efforts to support skill building, we need an organizational structure that puts Skills first and is dedicated to learning, and we need to bring training decisions close to the business. When those things happen, the chance of success is nearly guaranteed.

Skills are now a core part of the business
At SimCorp, Kenn is the Enterprise Learning Architect, and his role is a similar but also vastly different version of the well-known Head of L&D.

The Enterprise Learning Architect is the head cheerleader, as Ken calls it, of a team of 25 Learning Owners, that are responsible for Digital Skills in each of their niche areas.

That makes the learning organization very scalable, and it put the Skills and Training decisions in a very central position for the business. As Digital Transformation is accelerated, budgets are allocated to wherever they do the most good, and decision making is fast.

The Learning Owners are specialists in their fields, they understand the technologies and the Skills required in the business. They days of picking a random course off a list are long gone!

They are a central part of all projects. Digital Skills come first, not later and that is the way it has to be.

Transformation is just the new normal, it is more agile and faster and ongoing. It is never done, but it happens every day.

References:
Closing the Skills Gap Accelerator Network | World Economic Forum (weforum.org)
Digital Skills Insights 2020 (itu.int) (page 1-3)
Digital skills | Shaping Europe’s digital future (europa.eu)
75% of jobs will require advanced digital skills by 2030 | IT PRO

Next Episode

How Cybersecurity pro's match the evolution of Skills in the criminal world | Episode 3

In this episode, Frank is speaking with Dan Lawrence from Computacenter. Dan is a senior security leader with a wealth of demonstratable experience across a broad range of security functions. During his 30 year! career with both public and private sector organizations he has been protecting businesses and customers from IT related threats, harm and risks.

Dan's long career started in the UK police, and he is now with Computacentre. Dan champions foresight over insight, and specializes in minimizing the impact from harm.

The conversation touches on these subjects:

Security is a core part of any business
Dan feels that Cybersecurity skills are central to all organizations today. The number of risks and attacks is growing daily and with IT Transformations come Cybersecurity concerns and the need for updated and current Skills.

The special thing about Cybersecurity is the urgent call to keep up with the evolution of Skills in the criminal world.

As a business it is simply not an option to fall behind, because the consequence of that is not only missed opportunity, you could also be risking an attack that basically cripples your whole business in minutes.

How big is the problem with acquiring digital Skills for cybersecurity
In Dan's experience, the market is super competitive, there are more vacant positions than there are candidates, and recruiters are doing the very best that they can to make employers attractive. Expectations for salary are very high, and most candidates won't even have ALL the skills you need.

That inbalance makes it interesting to train your own Experts. Especially since Cybersecurity is a lot about the personal traits. Being curious and stubborn enough to keep looking for the abnormal. The technical skills can be taught.

Likely the demand for specialized Cybersecurity skills will always be higher than the supply. Cybercrime is evolving and more and more crime will happen. Cybercriminals share knowledge. You now get DDoS as a service; it is readily available.

These organized crime units are businesses now. They have HR organizations, and they ask for feedback after an attack. Cybercrime is a war between the attacker and the defender.

As they say, The defender has to get lucky every time. The attacker has to get lucky just once. 75% of weapons are designed for that one attack, making it harder to see trends and patterns.

It’s really a war between good and bad - who has the skills to outwit the other?

The Know your Skills Quiz
How does a pro such as Dan do on the Quiz? You'll need to listen to learn some very surprising fun facts around these questions for instance:

Which sector was the most targeted in 2021?
- How many cyber-attacks were distributed via email in 221?

Click the Play button to learn how a Top Pro such as Dan makes cybersecurity skills work, and get in touch with Readynez at [email protected] to join the conversation.
References: