The past decade has seen a pronounced growth in digital needs across the spectrum, and across industries. No matter the product or service, organizations of all sizes are staffing up to ensure that they can meet increased internal and customer needs to propel sustainable growth and success.

Within that environment, automation has become a key factor that helps to determine the success or failure of digital and technology operations. As CIOs are grappling with the opportunities and challenges of talent growth, implementation of features like automated Power BI reporting of sales data can make small but significant impacts in the success of the modern IT department.

That, in turn, requires both an understanding of current challenges and actionable solutions that can be implemented quickly and efficiently. Let’s dig into the current environment, and what technology leaders can take away.

The Nuances of Talent Growth in Technology Fields

Over the past few years, a clear trend has emerged: across industries, a well-known talent gap in resources has caused leaders to struggle with implementing both necessary and innovative strategies and tactical plans. 

The same thing is undeniably true in IT. The 2021 Gartner Talent Planning Survey, conducted among 184 CIOs in North America, EMEA, and APAC between November and December 2020, found that 55% of CIOs plan to increase their total number of full-time employees (FTEs) in IT within the year 2021.

The areas in which these technology leaders are looking to fill talent gaps are telling:

• Security operations takes the top spot, with 74% of CIOs looking to increase their staff by at least 2%.
• Analytics platforms, business workflow automation, integrations, and cloud platforms round out the top 5.
• Not surprisingly, IT automation and support for remote work are also looking at dramatically increased staffing needs before the end of this year. There are also plenty of live chat solutions to help with remote working. To check out more remote workforce tools, websites such as Fusion Connect can provide further assistance in this area to help support remote working.

Automation and integration, in other words, are helping management ease the strain of current resource gaps. Overwhelmingly, the need to accelerate digital integrations and initiatives is the primary driver behind maximizing the opportunities IT talent can bring in the near future.

How Automated Processes are Closing Technology Resource Gaps

That last point requires a bit more analysis and elaboration. Staffing up to account for new digital initiatives is a key priority. But at the same time, the technology talent shortage  has become a well-known factor challenging that otherwise straightforward goal. Human resource experts are recommending creative recruitment strategies to close the gap.

There are, however, other solutions that can be just as, if not more effective. 

The Promise of Security Automation

As data and information security continues to increase in importance across the spectrum, security automation offers an opportunity to minimize the hurdles associated with successful implementation. As Security Intelligence puts it,

The days of human analysts doing all the work are fast receding. The volumes of the data being created, the ever-growing types and variations of attack, mean there is too much for human analysts to process in meaningful timeframes. As a result, automation and machine learning based early triage is required to reduce the volumes down to manageable levels. 

The New Business Workflow Automation Reality

For many technology teams, business workflow automation is no longer a new process. It’s already integrated into the current workflow. Software giants like Microsoft and IBM, along with plenty of upstart competitors, are continually building ways to remove the manual tasks required for effective operations, automating common workflow processes to allow the technology team to focus on more strategic, impact-heavy tasks.

The Importance of Increasing Integration in Automated Processes

Naturally, an increasing technology-based work environment requires more natural integrations, as well. In fact, these integrations are in themselves a type of automation; technology teams who can help the organization seamlessly port data, cross platforms, and work from a single source of truth can minimize the work required in anything from duplicate detection to the maintenance of multiple legacy systems.

The Business Benefits of Automated Analytics Platforms 

Finally, analytics platforms like Power BI and Tableau are increasingly moving towards an automated environment. Done right, data from sales and other departments dynamically pull into actionable reports that help leadership across the organization make more informed decisions and build better growth and success strategies.

How PBRS Power BI Automation Can Increase Resource Efficiencies 

Imagine a world in which reporting sales data and other vital information no longer requires the manual labor of spreadsheets and custom-built charts. That world is already here. In fact, the Power BI Reports Scheduler from ChristianSteven software is a turnkey solution that can help CIOs minimize their reliance on local talent, instead automating processes that can close resource gaps.

As an added benefit, the tool also allows technology leaders close the geolocation gaps that have evolved out of an increasingly remote workforce. Insights from Power BI are delivered automatically to each stakeholder’s inbox, reducing the need to gather and synthesize the data manually.