Wave of retirements leads to loss of know-how

They are meeting many current challenges - such as contact restrictions or the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions - with digital and, increasingly, smart technologies. In addition, companies continue to be concerned about the shortage of skilled workers, which will become even more acute with the wave of retirements in the coming years. Last September and October, 195 business and IT managers from companies and public authorities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland took part in the study.

Greater alignment with customer needs is one of the three most important goals for more than half of those surveyed this year (54.9 percent). This applies even more frequently in public administration than in companies. However, public authorities have some catching up to do in many areas compared with the business community: while more than half of companies have digitized their ordering and payment processes, use customer journey analytics or base decisions on analytics findings, the figure for public authorities is only between 20 and 30 percent in each case. When it comes to setting up automated service offerings, business and government are roughly on a par.

"Companies have seen during the pandemic how important the user-friendliness of digital contact channels is for their competitiveness. They must assume that digital customer service will also be in high demand after the pandemic. Public authorities and agencies still have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to user-friendly online services."comments Martina Sennebogen, Managing Director of Capgemini in Austria. Data in sufficient quantity and quality is the basis for using intelligent technologies. On average, however, only slightly more than half of all data is available throughout the organization. The other half is subject to legal restrictions for 63 percent of respondents and internal restrictions such as data protection or security measures for 62 percent.

In the next ten years, an average of just under 23 percent of IT employees will also retire. Last year, the shortage of skilled workers caused little concern. Now the proportion of CIOs who fear negative effects has risen to just under 52 percent. The biggest concerns are the loss of expertise and an additional increase in the shortage of skilled workers, which is already high. At the same time, the participating CIOs predict that the strategic importance of IT will increase significantly and that the department will grow. It will employ slightly more specialists than generalists, as well as more people of different nationalities. Work will become more complex and agile, but also more often done in the home office and by automation tools or software robots.