Bridging the IT Talent Gap

Bridging the IT talent gap
An Economist Intelligence Unit report sponsored by SAPPreface
Bridging the IT talent gap is an Economist Intelligence Unit report sponsored by SAP. The Economist Intelligence Unit bears sole responsibility for this report. The Economist Intelligence Unit's editorial team conducted the interviews and wrote the report. The findings and views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsor. Dan Armstrong was the editor of the report. Richard Zoehrer was responsible for layout and design. Our thanks are due to the interviewees for their time and insights.
November 2007Bridging the IT talent gap
Bridging the IT talent gap
ecruiting IT talent to insurance assurance, where we have used offshore contractors, companies has never been but only as a stop-gap measure," Chu says. "For our easy, given the industry's reputation as being a critical roles, we want people to be 'born and raised' Rtechnological laggard, and today demographic at The Hartford." pressures are making the task of IT staffing even Like most insurance carriers, The Hartford harder. Most insurers depend on decades-old legacy traditionally relied upon architects to emerge systems to execute core business functions, and the organically from among their best developers rather IT professionals with the skills and the company- than breeding them within a defined career path, specific knowledge to run them are of early vintage themselves. As the latter retire, insurers are finding it hard to replace their skills. Perhaps even more Technology skill shortages are importantly, as those employees leave, they carry invaluable institutional knowledge with them. being felt within a broader context: It doesn't help that insurers' technology skill fewer graduates are pursuing careers shortages are being felt within a broader context of scarcity: fewer and fewer graduates are pursuing in core insurance areascareers in such core insurance areas as underwriting, actuarial science and claims management. Technology holds the hope of compensating for such deficits through automation and business process management strategies, but the success of those approaches depends in turn on meeting IT skill demands by recruiting talent from outside or cultivating it within the organisation. Outsourcing offers some relief both by picking up the slack in technology development and maintenance tasks, and in providing expertise on vanishing computing languages. But some of the greatest skill shortages suffered by insurers are not amenable to that approach. Within The Hartford Financial Services' IT organisation, the greatest shortages are of technology architects and business analysts, according to John Chu, SVP, e-Business and Technology. "There are certain areas of acute shortage, such as development and quality
© The Economist Intelligence Unit 2007 3Bridging the IT talent gap
Chu confides. "Architects are a big source of our [BPM] and enterprise content management [ECM]."solution design and play a critical role in everything The role of the business analyst on both the we do, but there is no natural place you can go to business and IT side has grown increasingly similar find them," he says. as IT's influence has increased and alignment Nor are architects the only highly skilled IT between the two camps has grown, Chu argues. professionals in short supply. Chu reports that, "we However, he laments, "the core engineering, logic-find the greatest shortages in areas of the organisation based, critical reasoning type of skill needed to where we are developing new competencies and execute and build requirements is another area technologies, such as business process management where we encounter an acute shortage."
Career paths
he Hartford's strategy to address that refers to as very specific and structured skills and shortage has been to rationalise the competencies. "Within our Business Technology haphazard nature of its architecture Development (BTD) group we have created a discrete aTnd business analyst roles, formally define their career path that qualifies business analysts as entry, characteristics and craft clear career paths for middle and top level," Chu relates. "We have been able them. Architecture candidates are now specifically to structure how those roles look, we have created groomed for roles in enterprise archite... [download for more]