From healthcare to retail, UK organisations are investing in digital infrastructure and services to drive better outcomes. Learning from their experience of the pandemic, they know that the success or failure of these projects could be critical to future performance. Yet one challenge above all others threatens to undermine these efforts: a lack of skilled talent to drive projects forward.
A cross-sector challenge
This skills challenge affects multiple industries, but not always in the same way. In retail for example, consumer appetite for e-commerce soared during the pandemic. Amazon’s UK sales alone jumped 20% year on year in 2021, up a massive 82% on 2019 figures. Now the industry is looking at ways to maintain the momentum, both online and in-store, through major investments in automation, artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR) and blockchain.
However, the skills may not be there to ensure effective deployment. One study claims that more than a third of retailers don’t understand how these technologies can add value for their business. With digital skills now required in 79% of UK retail jobs, there’s already a looming gap.
In healthcare, the dynamics are slightly different. Digital transformation is seen as vital to helping the NHS reduce operational costs and improve both staff productivity and patient outcomes. Yet a digital skills gap at various levels of the health service could be a serious roadblock to adoption of potentially transformative technology. A 2021 report identified gaps in the skillsets of those in senior management supposedly leading digital change, as well as a shortage of data analytics skills, and a resistance to embracing state-of-the-art technologies.
Financial services firms are concerned that they’ll be left behind by competitors more capable of leveraging digitalisation to drive market advantage. Their fears are well founded: a UK Finance study reveals that 30% of financial services workers feel they need more digital expertise. AI, automation and data analytics are seen as particularly vital to accelerating growth.
Yet while financial services firms have the cash to spend on IT modernisation, they don’t necessarily have the talent to supply and exploit this next-gen technology. One report warns that the time it takes for a skill to become half as valuable is accelerating because of rapid innovation.
Filling the gap
This is where Daisy’s experienced teams of experts can help to bridge the gap, with a flexible range of services designed to ensure organisations are never short of the right skills. We can help organisations across any vertical to plug their skills gaps, whether on an ad-hoc basis or as a dedicated resource.
Daisy’s Remote Technical Support and Advice offers an extra layer of technical assistance for organisations with their own in-house operational teams. These teams may run IT day-to-day but not necessarily have the deeper knowledge of the critical cloud, desktop, network, and unified communications technologies that support their business. Daisy provides that expertise in a highly flexible service up to 30 hours per month, to help tackle service performance, configuration, integration, and other issues.
Daisy’s Rapid IT Workforce delivers dedicated professionals where customer need it most: either to cover for annual leave, long-term absences or even to bridge a gap until new full-time recruits can be hired. Covering everything from enterprise resource planning (ERP) and CRM systems, to servers, databases, cloud, and networks, we can offer support within 24 hours’ notice. Whether it’s a service desk analyst or a specialist technical resource customers need, Daisy has it.