Interquest Blog

Quote of the month

“It’s no use saying “we are doing our best” you have to succeed in doing what is necessary”

 

Winston Churchill 1939

Futureview

At our last Board meeting I gave a crystal ball presentation on the IT market. I can't help thinking that the future of IT will be largely unaffected by the current downturn - its direction is always to squeeze value from data and finding different ways to do it.Download Futureview

Winning

I was very impressed by the speaker at a recent dinner I attended. Humphrey Walters helped Clive Woodward coach England to World Cup glory and was both an inspirational and entertaining speaker.

I have paraphrased his talk (probably heinously badly) and have attached my Powerpoint version here: Download Humphrey Walters . But to read more about him go here.

Mission Critical Operations

It is worth considering for a moment, in these times of uncertainty, the business sectors that are critical to organisations. Which services and the staff that support them MUST they keep whatever happens?

I've experienced recessionary markets before and have thrived and grown divisions by understanding which services are mission critical for our clients. We know that the IM (Infrastructure Mgt) software sector will always tend to prosper during tighter times when IT spend will steer towards necessity and business imperative applications.

Enterprise software products have become so embedded into the IT infrastructure of most large organisations, that in many cases it has become almost unthinkable from a “commercial sense” standpoint to rip them out and start again. Many have been implemented for so many years and been constantly tweaked into bespoke applications that they are almost impossible to replace without starting from scratch. The cost of implementing an Enterprise wide system usually runs into many millions of pounds once installed, therefore it is a brave CFO/FD that signs off a 'ground-up' application change. During more frugal times the likelihood of considering such change is drastically reduced too.

Put simply, Enterprise software players such as Oracle, SAP, HP, IBM, etc. have a stranglehold on their legacy client base and through fairly active acquisition activity during the last 5 years, all have a suite of niche software offerings with cutting edge software applications within their portfolio. The industry currently wants/needs them as these offerings generate efficiency savings. It is these niches where the higher margin 'consultancy rate' business can be found.

The majority of IT staffing agencies shy away from here due to lack of knowledge/being out of the generic comfort zone and therefore where there is less competition that good quality business can be found currently. Service Mgt, Asset Mgt, Business Technology Optimisation, Intelligent Infrastructure Mgt, Storage etc. are all hot areas, as is the use of ITIL methodology standards to implement into these areas.

The Enterprise software vendors tend to follow an upgrade path that usually renders earlier versions of the software as unsupported after a new version is released. This forces the End User Client into an upgrade path/migration that will generate a need for implementation & development/testing resource to fulfill for example if SAP release a module of their software at v3.x, then it is highly likely that any of their install base using v1.x will be offered a preferential deal by SAP to upgrade to v3.x or take the risk of running an unsupported v1.x - which when running business critical Enterprise apps. is not really an option) Staffing business operating within one of these niches would be well advised to watch their chosen software vendor closely to monitor what new software deals are done (usually publicised on websites, in the trade journals, or simply monitored by keeping close to sales people in organisation), as sitting behind this will be implementation resource needs for sure.

It strikes me that all recruiting companies undertake an element of “Mission Critical” work for their clients and that it would be worth each company brainstorming individually which parts are likely to be uniquely busy to their division next year and hence worth giving extra time effort and focus to. Compliance and Risk Management seem to be extremely busy at the moment and so is BPO, as outsourcing drives efficiency, leading to cost savings in these increasingly frugal times.

Thudding Balls

A journalist asked me to comment on a poignant matter today. Evidently, according to City psychologist Julia Noakes, “The problem in finance is that there is too much thrusting individualism and not enough femininity”. Noakes adds that “A lot of women are deterred from striving from senior management positions because they don’t want to deny 50% of their personalities”. So would we be in the same mess now if women had held more sway in The City.

 

My reply was that women bring three important qualities to the corporate environment. The ability to empathise means they often don’t operate with the same blinkered attitudes of many men. This doesn’t make them any less formidable competitors – quite the reverse, in understanding what others are thinking lies the ability to plan to counter. Their lack of ego means decisions are made for wider and more long term benefit. And finally their multitasking skills genuinely do keep balls in the air.

 

And The City is resounding with the thuds of dropping balls at the moment…

IT GCSE uptake falls again

It’s alarming that the number of students studying GCSE ICT has declined by 25 per cent this year. With the UK currently experiencing a shortage of IT skills, we need to get the message out before students hit 14 that IT offers exceptional job prospects. Otherwise, they will miss out on the opportunity to forge a career in such an exciting and innovative industry – and our skills shortage will become even more critical.

There is huge demand for IT skills in this country, and it’s unlikely to be affected by the economic downturn – especially by the time yesterday’s crop of GCSE students graduates. We need to get the word out that IT is a creative, exciting place to be, offering much greater stability than other industries.

Government initiatives to support our industry with in-work training will fail if there are 25 per cent fewer interested teenagers every year. If the UK is to remain competitive in the global marketplace, we need to make up ground, starting with encouraging and recruiting young talent, so that our IT industry has the skilled people it needs.

Credit crunch fears force job cuts but employee confidence remains high

Back in February, we carried out a study to gauge the mood in the IT industry amid emerging rumours of a credit crunch. While other sectors were announcing huge job cuts and forecasting disappointing results, the research showed that IT was largely unaffected by the doom and gloom – just twelve per cent of those questioned were worried about their job.

However, talk of a recession has increased at an alarming rate since then, with prices soaring, profits falling, and large corporations warning that job cuts are unavoidable.

With every other sector falling victim, IT could not escape – so we wanted to find out how things had changed since earlier in the year. Earlier this month we revisited the survey and asked the same questions as before, then compared the results. They showed that fears over job security in the IT industry have increased four fold since February, with over half of contractors now concerned about their current or future job. 

We also found that IT companies are now making redundancies, with one in three reporting job cuts within their organisation – a rise of twenty per cent since February.

However, 52 per cent of respondents said they felt IT was more secure than other industries.

I find these results uplifting and encourgaing. Despite the economic doom and gloom of the past year, the IT sector has been pretty robust. While other industries fell victim to job cuts and declining profits, IT remained resilient. The results of our surveys show it’s only now that we’re feeling the effects of the credit crunch.

No sector is immune from economic fluctuation but any downturn in IT is only likely to be temporary. IT is at the very heart of businesses – companies simply can’t survive without it and this survey demonstrates that IT professionals understand this point.

Unlike during the last recession which was linked to the dot-com boom and bust, this time IT is one of the last fields to be affected by the credit crunch. This means it will be one of the first areas to pick up again when the economy revives so contractors are right to remain confident.

Women in the workplace

With many women still feeling they  have to choose between a career or a family, businesses are missing out on  potential stars.
 
In order to combat this, we need to start  promoting female success stories and encouraging women to take a more active  role in the development of younger female workers.
 
But all too  often, women are reluctant to champion the cause of their female colleagues.  Perhaps this is because they have fought hard to get where they are, and  promoting the skills and strengths of someone else could threaten the security  of their own position. 

Yet if women want to make having both a  family and a career ubiquitous, they need to use their wings to nurture, as  well as soar.

Recession? What recession? How HR must fight the squeeze to ensure business success

A survey of 2,000 adults by bank Lloyds TSB has showed more than a quarter believed their job was less safe than a year ago. Just one in 10 said their job had become more secure. http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/2008/08/04/46978/employees-lose-confidence-in-job-security.html

The media hype around the ‘looming’ recession merely serves to perpetuate the problem: businesses feel insecure and belts start to be tightened. However, while the economy is under increasing scrutiny, we are yet to experience a lull. In fact, salaries are higher than ever and the demand for skilled workers, especially in IT, is still strong.

Despite this, the recruitment sector in particular has been rattled by the reports. When the papers start to predict rises in inflation, HR departments often fear that they will be the first to feel the squeeze. HR directors may consider putting a freeze on recruitment – or even start to make job cuts. However, this is simply a knee-jerk reaction, and often not the wisest course of action for the future success of the business.

Rises and falls in the economy and their knock-on impact on HR and recruitment are part of a cycle we have seen before and will no doubt see again. And while speculation about a recession is unlikely to die down just yet, when it eventually does the scramble to recruit the best will begin again.

Instead of panicking, companies need to alleviate future recruitment issues by snapping up rare skills while the market takes a downward turn. HR teams need to prioritise projects that are essential to business growth and ensure they are well-resourced, whatever happens in the marketplace.

Companies should learn their lesson from this inexorable cycle and think proactively about the future. Instead of giving in to the squeeze, HR directors need to take the lead in ensuring the business has the skills and people to ride the wave and come out successfully at the other side.

Generation Y

With belts being tightened across departments as the credit crunch deepens, jobs are under threat in many areas of the business. Many employees are under scrutiny as their contributions towards business growth and performance are analysed.

But one section drawing the most controversy, is ‘Generation Y’ whom many believe should be the first to feel the recruitment pinch.

This new generation is the future workforce, and ignoring its needs will lead to longer term problems within business. In sacrificing the ‘Generation Y’ during credit crunch times, you lose the intellectual property and ability vested in them: they may not leave behind huge reports and legacies of new and improved practice as that is held in their head; nor may they leave behind contacts as those are held on Facebook, their i-Phone or Linked In. But what they may leave is a hole in the organisation’s strategy to compete over the next generation.

There is a new Lingua Franca – but what is widely accepted is that the business that succeeds is the one quickly able to learn the language of the day, whether its English, Mandarin or Generation Y tech-speak.