Big data, cloud services and consumerization of IT are no longer emerging trends \u2013 they are now embedded in mainstream IT.\u00a0 Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI), the next generation of Industrial automation (Industry 4.0), intelligent analytics and Quantum Computing are the next wave of emerging trends.\u00a0 When we talk about the future of the workforce, what we are really talking about is the relationship of people and data.\u00a0 A key skill of the workforce of the future will be to take the vast amounts of data that is being collected and transform it into information and actionable insights to drive decision making.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s take a moment to consider the disruptions taking place in the workforce, driven by technology advancements.\u00a0 Automation has been displacing factory workers for many years, but we are now seeing technology replacing the activities that management staff, knowledge workers and customer service professionals were once performing.\u00a0 Just because current roles are being disrupted, doesn\u2019t mean that the people performing them don\u2019t have the skills and talents to contribute to a company\u2019s future growth.\u00a0 What it means is that companies need to re-purpose and perhaps re-train these professionals to operate in a data-driven world.<\/p>\n
The proliferation of technology over the past decade has created a big data problem bigger than anyone ever expected.\u00a0 What was once a data shortage is now such a large data surplus, that decision makers struggle to separate out the meaningful information from extraneous noise in their environment.\u00a0 When they feel overwhelmed by the data presented to them, leaders are now ignoring the data and resorting to instinct as the basis for critical decisions.\u00a0 This approach will not be sustainable very long.<\/p>\n
The challenge facing companies over the next 5-10 years will be figuring out how to use the data that is available to them, refine it into information, and from that information harvest actionable insights to drive decisions.\u00a0 While technology plays a big role in enabling this transformation, there is a tremendous need for data professionals to interpret data, classify it and put it into the context of business problems that need solving.\u00a0 This is a role that many former knowledge workers, customer service professionals and managers are well suited \u2013 because they understand your company, market, products and customer environment.<\/p>\n
The keys to developing these workers into data professionals is providing them with access to data, the analysis tools to organize and work with it, and a structured process for data refinement that feeds the decision-making process. Tools and access to data are the easy part, where the workforce skill gap exists is in understanding and performing the data refinement process.\u00a0 In the past, there has been a special group of employees who understood how to do this. They held titles like data architects, data scientists and business analysts – specialized data management professionals who understood what it takes to work with large amounts of data.\u00a0 The skills and techniques of these specialists now need to be replicated to the broader workforce to leverage a greater pool of business knowledge and solve a wider breadth of business problems.<\/p>\n
The future of work for the next decade will to a large extent be focused managing the data the company has today and helping the organization use data in new ways to solve problems and exploit new opportunities. While many job roles are being disrupted by technology, the people performing them have skills and experience that can create tremendous value for your company if you give them the skills and environment to use them in new ways.\u00a0 Leaders are starving for real information and actionable insights to drive decisions.\u00a0 It will be up to the workforce of the future to provide them the information they need.<\/p>\n
Kepner-Tregoe is an industry leader in problem-solving, continuous improvement and operational decision-making.\u00a0 For over 60 years, the experts at KT have been helping companies drive measurable and sustainable improvements through best practices, processes and employee training.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Big data, cloud services and consumerization of IT are no longer emerging trends \u2013 they are now embedded in mainstream IT.\u00a0 Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI), the next generation of Industrial automation (Industry 4.0), intelligent analytics and Quantum Computing are the next wave of emerging trends.\u00a0 When we talk about the future of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":525,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[129],"class_list":["post-25341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n