Hot skill: Service Management
If you work in the technology field, you probably know about the rapid change that occurs there. Beside technology change, you also have to adjust to changes from the globalization trend and financial market. During the last crisis, thousands companies all over the world collapsed and million people lost their jobs. As the economy begins to recover, companies are now preparing for the next battle: The battle for surviving.
The major battle will be in the area of applying Information Technology (IT) to support business in gaining a competitive advantages. Strategies to reduce costs, increase revenues, making business process more efficient and reducing wastes are being adopted and implemented in every companies. Succeed in this battle will guarantee survival and growth but failure will result in bankruptcy or being acquired by others. The application of using technology as a key competitive has grown in importance over the years, as IT moves from a cost to a revenue generating function.
Unfortunately, many IT managers do NOT know how to move from technical roles to business roles. Many cannot change the way they think or the way they manage. They cannot come up with new ideas that can provide competitive advantages to the company. They do not know how to integrate their systems with those of their suppliers and customers. Today customers and users want instant access to information such as products, services, orders, bills and payments through a variety of access points such as mobile phone, email, text messages, or Internet portals. These needs demand new thinking, new idea, new technologies to help their businesses solve problems. To do that software is no longer just a product but also a services.
According to recent IT industry study, a majority of managers that got laid-off in past years were “Pure” technical people and people who were kept were managers with “business skills”. This fact is a warning sign to people who work in technology area and an indication that technical skill alone is NOT enough to survive in this fast changing world. The study found that most companies are retraining their managers to improve performance. In 2010, U.S companies had spent over $ 650 million to retrain their IT managers in business skills. The focus is on developing strategies to transition from develop products to providing services. The hottest skill in high demand is the IT service management or people who can manage this new kind of service.
The service management skills is essential because IT managers will be in charge of projects that focus on reduce costs, improve productivity by providing better and more efficient services to users. As service managers they must work closely with customers and users from other business units. Instead of develop software, they must ensure that their services meet the users' requirements on capacity, efficiency, performance etc. They must know how to control changes in the production systems and ensure that data are kept securely in database. They must monitor all services to make sure that IT systems are available, reliable and providing sufficient resource, infrastructure to meet both current and future users' needs.
However, the industry study found that retraining technical managers into service managers is NOT easy. Many could NOT master these skills as they feel uncomfortable working in the business environment where communication and soft-skill are important. Even with training, customer satisfaction is still low and the business value is not achieved as expected. That is why companies began to turn to another solution: “Hiring recent graduates from universities that taught these skills and lay off technical managers instead of retraining them”. Data from past few years indicated many highly-paid technical managers were laid-off at the same time more graduates in Information System Management were hired, especially from universities that taught service management skills.
The industry study concluded: “In this competitive job market, to reduce costs and increase profits, lay off highly-paid technical managers that failed to acquire business skills and hiring better trained, better skills, lower wages graduates is a logical business choice”.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
