According to Gartner, worldwide IT spending it predicted to grow by at least 5.5 percent in 2023 when compared to 2022 – this is despite many challenges including a tech talent shortage and economic turbulence.
In a press release on the topic, John-David Lovelock, Distinguished VP Analyst with Gartner, said, “Macroeconomic headwinds are not slowing digital transformation. IT spending will remain strong, even as many countries are projected to have near-flat gross domestic product (GDP) growth and high inflation in 2023. Prioritization will be critical as CIOs look to optimize spend while using digital technology to transform the company’s value proposition, revenue and client interactions.”
In addition to the growth in IT spending, spending on software is expected to grow by double digits (12 percent) as companies invest in software to spur digital transformation initiatives and combat the resource constraints in place as the tech talent shortage continues. According to Gartner, software spending will focus on tools that can help organizations gain competitive advantages through increased productivity, automation and other software-driven transformation initiatives.
Critical Shortage of Skilled IT Labor Continues
Despite the positive news around IT spending, Gartner notes there continues to be a critical shortage of skilled IT labor – an issue they predict to continue until at least 2026 – while the demand for IT talent remains high.
“Tech layoffs do not mean that the IT talent shortage is over,” said Lovelock in the press release. “IT spending on internal services is slowing in all industries, and enterprises are not keeping up with wage rate increases. As a result, enterprises will spend more money to retain fewer staff and will turn to IT services firms to fill in the gaps.”
So how can companies looking to gain a competitive advantage tackle digital transformation initiatives and a lack of skilled IT talent available to help implement these changes? You can start by investing in low-code/no-code IT software that helps automate tasks and connects application ecosystems to a single source of truth for better security and governance.
The Benefits of No-Code Enterprise Service Management Software and iPaaS
No-code Enterprise Service Management (ESM) software and iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service) have significant benefits for businesses undergoing digital transformation. With ESM you can implement a single software throughout your entire organization to manage all tasks and service requests – whether in IT, HR, marketing, facilities, finance or another department.
With the right codeless ESM software, you can empower departments to spin up their own service portals and knowledge bases, as well as forms for service requests and other needs. And because the software is no-code, there doesn’t need to be a reliance on IT to launch the portal or make changes during the admin of the platform.
Using a no-code ESM software that includes an integration and automation layer (iPaaS) can supercharge your service management and delivery and improve efficiencies and communication between departments.
With TeamDynamix iPaaS, for example, you can use a drag-and-drop flow builder to facilitate integrations and automated workflows. In addition, the tool has a library of connectors to popular systems including Office365, Workday, DocuSign, AWS, Azure, Salesforce and more.
By connecting all applications and systems using a tool like iPaaS – you can have a central hub that gives visibility into all information flowing within and out of your organization. You can monitor APIs for and changes or security issues and automate alerts and notifications so there are no gaps when communicating changes to systems. All of this gives companies better security and governance and reduces the tech silos that are common throughout organizations.
Here are some other key benefits of using ESM and iPaaS:
- Increased efficiency: No-code iPaaS helps automate processes, allowing businesses to streamline workflows and reduce the time spent on manual tasks (think monthly data reporting, password reset requests, name change requests, etc.). This can lead to a significant increase in productivity.
- Cost savings: By automating processes, businesses can reduce the need for outsourcing and better retain the employees they have. This is especially helpful when IT departments, in particular, are struggling to fill open positions.
- Improved collaboration: No-code ESM and iPaaS platforms facilitate collaboration between teams and departments by providing a centralized platform for data and information sharing.
- Scalability: iPaaS platforms can handle large volumes of data and integrate with a variety of systems, making them highly scalable and adaptable to the changing needs of a business. This is also true of no-code ESM software that allows companies to start small but grow as the business grows.
- Flexibility: No-code ESM software and iPaaS tools can be customized to fit the specific needs of a business, allowing for greater flexibility and agility. In addition, individual departments aren’t held back by IT backlogs – allowing them to quickly make changes that can positively impact business outcomes.
Using One No-Code Platform to Improve Service, Reduce Toil
At Nutrabolt, a rapid-growth active health and wellness company based in Austin, Texas, they are using TeamDynamix to automate ticket assignments, create accounts and more. “We had a help desk tool in place, but it was not purposefully built. It was very generic, and there was no discipline in the use of it,” Mark Dittenber, Director of IT, said.
Dittenber and his staff needed a highly flexible and customizable platform that could support new IT processes with automated workflows now, and into the future, as the company’s IT operations continue to mature.
“I liked the lightweight nature of TeamDynamix, as well as its ability to scale with our needs,” he said.
Dittenber and his team were able to implement TeamDynamix in a matter of weeks. They began with IT Service Management and have now expanded to include project management. All the configurations and automation are created without any technical resources on TeamDynamix’s no-code platform.
Within the tool, Mark and his team established customized forms and automated workflows to create network accounts, assign rights and privileges to new teammates, submit and track service requests, request and approve IT changes, provision new devices and more.
As they create new IT processes from the ground up, they’re also building out a knowledge base and a self-service portal. Having thoughtfully crafted processes in place — and the right enterprise service platform to support them — has already made a big impact in just a few months.
“We really notice this when we onboard new teammates, they are ramping much faster,” Dittenber said.
At Pima County, they’ve taken a single-platform approach for ESM with iPaaS as part of the organization’s digital transformation strategy.
“TeamDynamix is a place where we are really trying to kickstart and accelerate the ideology that automation with the right tools can bring value not just to IT, but to other departments within our organization,” said Mark Hayes, information technology leader, “We’re starting in IT so that they can see the possibilities as we move forward with our digital transformation and expand outside of IT.”
Pima County made the switch to TeamDynamix after using a different system for the last 10 years. Traditionally, the county has taken in tickets through email, phone and a service catalog with base-level triage, but with TeamDynamix in place, they will be able to leverage self-service and automation to serve its citizens better and reduce the drain on employees and resources.
One process automation, in particular, that’s saving significant time is onboarding and offboarding employees – something every organization deals with.
“You don’t need to waste so much time when it comes to onboarding,” Hayes said. “It really is such a sour experience for a new hire to come in, in this day and age, and sit around for three days waiting on their computer to show up. We need to get out of that mode and iPaaS will help us do that.”
And when it comes to offboarding Hayes said, “As a government organization we get audited by the state every year and they want to know what these stale accounts are doing sitting here. Offboarding is currently a very manual process – having to review the list from HR of people who are no longer employed with us and manually revoke their privileges from all the different systems and software and disable their accounts. There’s absolutely no reason for that to not be automated.”