With the advent and advancement of technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT, the IT industry was undergoing a tectonic shift in business models, revenue streams, and new opportunities. With the onset of COVID-19, challenges have only compounded for the IT industry, which was already at crossroads.
Top Challenges to Know About
With the twin challenge of rapidly changing technology and a slowdown in the global economy due to COVID-19, IT leaders will have to overcome several obstacles to script a turnaround for the IT industry.
- Innovation Crisis
Given the rapidly evolving technologies like machine learning, artificial intelligence, IT leaders will have to drive change through all the verticals to ensure that they can come up with the right customized IT products and solutions. In essence, 2020 is about change for survival as only the innovative and best applicable technology would drive revenues.
- Adjusting Business Models
With new opportunities like software-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service, etc., IT leaders will have to come up with new business models and stitch alliances to develop their product portfolio. To extract that extra penny from the client, IT leaders will have to ensure that their IT services solve a business problem and is also cost-effective.
- Managing Physical Infrastructure
Cloud services and data centers will form the backbone of any digital economy. IT leaders will have to use their thinking cap extensively to ensure that they utilize the physical infrastructure in an optimum manner. With the rising cost of maintenance of physical infrastructure and smaller companies making a transition to the cloud, IT leader would have to walk a tightrope as far as managing and spending on digital support.
- Fiscal Challenges
IT leaders would have to allocate budget very judiciously to tide over the economic slowdown. Business needs would urge them to spend heavily on R&D. However, given the falling revenues across the globe and rising uncertainty regarding economic revival, the IT leaders might have to bite the bullet regarding spending. Caught between the devil and deep blue sea, the IT leaders will have to tide over financial challenges to ensure maximum return for every penny spent.
- Workforce Management
With the advent of COVID-19, IT leaders would face the stiff challenge of managing and motivating the workforce over the entire year. Human resource management could provide a strategic edge if appropriately managed by IT service.
- Reskilling Employees
In the IT industry, reskilling people in new technologies, again and again, is not an easy task. Reskilling mid-level employees have often been an Achilles’ heel for most of the IT companies. Hence developing the right training modules, developing case-based solutions to train employees, and focusing on lowering attrition would be another big challenge for the IT leaders in 2020.
- Customer Acquisition
Covid-19, in essence, have pushed tech adoption across multiple sectors. Most of the companies for all aspects of the economy are now looking to go digital or utilize IT services to cut costs. Outsourcing of redundant jobs to IT solutions providers and the pooling of IT resources are on the rise. Hence this presents a challenge as well as the opportunity for the IT leaders in the year 2020.
If properly managed, this may lead to increased revenue; however, if the IT leaders fail to customize their products to suit individual business needs, it may lead to customer attrition and revenue loss. Hence customizing products to catch new business would be another big challenge for the IT leaders in the year 2020.
- Ensuring Data Privacy
With the exponential increase in data consumption and data generation, ensuring data privacy remains atop challenge for most IT firms. Loss of data might lead to companies being wiped out, and hence IT leaders would have to develop norms to ensure that data privacy is maintained.
- Regulatory Compliance
Across the globe, governments are turning tough on IT companies and want to control certain aspects of their operations. Hence ensuring compliance with the regulatory agencies while ensuring no business disruption would be another challenge for IT leaders.
Conclusion
The year 2020 will herald an era of frugal innovation and customized production for the IT industry. Balancing the twin objective of driving revenue while expanding into business models would be one of the critical challenges for IT leaders in 2020.
