No organization is immune to the current economic slowdown. The question of how you’re impacted, however, largely depends on the team you’re on.
For business technology (BT), the impact has been both predictable and surprising.
For example, according to our State of Business Technology 2022 report*, the majority (80%) of BT teams are receiving a bigger budget than last year, with almost a third of teams reporting that their budget has “significantly increased.”
That said, their growing budgets are, less surprisingly, going more towards essential measures than to innovative projects. Case in point: The number of BT teams that can’t allocate any of their budget towards innovative projects has increased by 9 percentage points in just a year.
We’ll take a closer look at how BT teams are operating during these less certain economic conditions. And, for the BT professionals who’ve had the unfortunate experience of losing their jobs, we’ll explore the skills they should prioritize to become a more attractive candidate.
*We partnered with Atomik Research, an independent research firm, to survey more than 500 full-time BT professionals who work at companies that have at least 100 employees.
BT teams are relying on automation to increase efficiency
As BT teams look for ways to cut costs without compromising performance (i.e. becoming more efficient), they’re leaning on automation more than anything else.
Even still, the 58% is likely a significant undercount as the other approaches they’re taking naturally paves the way for automation. For instance, the changes that BT teams implement from process audits (43%) likely include automation—at least to some extent.
Perhaps less expected, more than half of BT teams are looking to introduce efficiencies by onboarding applications. Considering how organizations already work with a bloated tech stack and that BT teams are actively cutting SaaS spend (more on this next), it’s clear that best-of-breed point solutions are invaluable.
More than half of BT professionals feel pressured to reduce SaaS spend
As organizations search for ways to reduce costs, it appears that their SaaS subscriptions are far from immune: More than half (57%) of BT professionals feel pressured to evaluate and cut down on these investments.
How BT professionals cut back on their SaaS subscriptions, however, varies:
Not everyone believes that BT has to go through these cost-cutting efforts on their own. Greg Paris, the Head of BT at People.ai, argues that business teams should also play an active role in evaluating their applications’ performance—and BT can show them how.
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Hiring managers are looking for a blend of technical and soft skills
Our report also aims to help BT professionals who are looking for new opportunities by shedding light on the skills that can make them a more attractive candidate.
Here’s what we gleaned from hiring managers in BT:
Clearly, technical skills are essential, but Stephanie Dwight, our Senior Director of Automation and Applications, believes that a candidate’s ability to show that they can leverage those skills when working with internal business partners is also crucial.
Given BT’s strategic role across the business, as explained by Dwight (and Paris earlier), it perhaps comes as little surprise that soft skills—such as communication, collaboration, and time management—are also a significant consideration when evaluating BT talent.
Wondering what else we discovered?
Download our full report to get a better sense of how the BT function is evolving, the measures BT teams are investing in, and much more.
