ome of the hottest skills being sought by corporate IS shops are possessed by people with nontechnical backgrounds-and in an organization's own backyard.
"By the end of 1997, 5% to 7% of corporate IT shops will be made up with people with nontraditional IT backgrounds-business consultants or people with line-of-business expertise," says David Foote, a contributing analyst with the Meta Group and author of a 200-page IT salary and skills study recently released by the Stamford,
Conn., IT research firm. The study, titled Report on The New IT Professional: Salaries, Job Descriptions and Best Practices, draws on data from Meta's 1,200 clients. While the data shows that non-IT people are the obvious minority in IS shops, "those numbers have grown from just about zero a few years ago," says Foote.
The push by companies to install new enterprise resource planning applications and other strategic client-server business software has fueled the demand for talent that goes beyond traditional IT skills such as programming and systems management, Foote says-and forced organizations to look within. "Often, the ideal person to be involved with developing the front end of data warehousing applications is someone who's come from the business side of a company's operations."
Of the 13 widely sought-after data warehousing positions identified in the Meta Group study, half are involved with the development or management of front-end services, to which people with business backgrounds can cont
ribute significantly, says Foote. That's because business-line people often have the experience of working directly with or among the potential end users of new applications, and often have better developed soft skills. "Frequently, these people can listen to end users and better guess what it is those users need from a business and technical perspective, even if the end users can't quite articulate it," he says.
Sears, Roebuck and Co. is one company seeing the benefits of a formal "functional cross-pollination" program, which encourages non-IT employees within its various business operations to move into new positions within IS, says Ryland Harrelson, director of human resources for Sears' IS organization. Under the program, for example, a regional Sears credit business supervisor could spend 18 to 24 months working within the company's IS organization to assist in the development of new credit or other financial applications or programs. After the stint in IT, the employee would return to the retailer's
credit business, armed with an array of newly learned IT skills, such as data warehousing expertise, to help launch new systems or marketing programs, says Harrelson.
"This creates a new breed of technology and business professional who can come up with more creative solutions and better problem solving," says Harrelson. To date, about 40 to 60 employees have gone through the 2-year-old program.
Reducing Turnover
Sears' functional cross-pollination program, combined with a number of other training and incentive programs at the Hoffman Estates, Ill., retailer, has helped keep IT employee turnover in the single digits. By comparison, many IT organizations report annual employee turnover rates of 25% or higher.
Among the new positions in IT shops that frequently require business expertise are business technologists, who help bridge the gap between business groups and IT; information architects, who help set information processes and policies across lines of business; and cross-platform
enterprise project managers, who link projects, budgets, schedules, and resources across the enterprise.
Meta Group also released a separate report last week focusing on intranet and Internet skills and salaries. Among the findings: Job backgrounds of Webmasters are split between those with traditional technical skills and those with business and marketing skills, which contribute to the development of Web content.
What Companies Offer To Attract And Keep 'New Breed' IT Talent
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Discretionary market adjustments to base salary..............80%
"Hot skills" bonus separate from base salary....................75%
"Hot skills" bonus as part of base salary...........................50%
Sign-on bonuses..............................................................35%
Discretionary bonuses to reward performance...................18%
Team incentive bonuses....................................................17%
DATA: Meta Group survey of 1,200 companies
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ome of the hottest skills being sought by corporate IS shops are possessed by people with nontechnical backgrounds-and in an organization's own backyard.
