The Real Digital Skills Needed by Businesses

As a Business Development Manager for a West Midlands based IT Training & IT Systems specialist @maximity_uk, Hector Van Duesbury started working for the business on the 22^nd March, just a day before lockdown.

The 27-year-old father from Stafford left the recruitment industry after a financially rewarding 7 year career where he was placing Architects, Developers and DevOps Engineers in London into full time permanent work, to pursue his passion which is enabling businesses to embrace new and emerging technologies so business owners/leaders can focus on the important parts of their businesses, their products, services and customers!

We spoke to Hector about two subjects in our interview, IT Training and Digital Transformation.

Here’s what he had to say…

“Unless businesses have staff whose responsibility it is to be plugged into the rapidly evolving world of technology, they will either have to partner with an established, credible and reputable IT business to keep their business moving forward or inevitably fall behind their competition who are doing exactly that”.

“It is unfortunate the Covid-19 pandemic is affecting so many of our businesses in so many ways, but I know from the work we’ve already done if businesses do take their IT systems and training more seriously, they can be more operationally efficient, they can reach their customers easier, they will provide a better service and they will be making their employees lives as easy as possible. This could be the difference between thriving and just surviving”.

“It’s clear to see that the consensus and way of life is becoming more digital. Over the last 30 years we’ve seen our whole way of life take a gradual shift towards technology, and this is evolution but today as a society, we’re so reliant on it. It seems that businesses are having to implement essentially 10 years’ worth of IT into their business to keep up with the governments mission to rapidly digitalise our society, and the evidence of this is contactless payments, closing physical stores, promoting online services and businesses, and trying to stop natural trade from happening”.

Maximity has been an established Digital Training Centre of Excellence in the West Midlands for 20 years so we wanted to know more from Maximity about the technical training problems that businesses are facing in the area.

“It’s not just the tech that companies are working with that is causing a huge bottleneck, it’s training staff in new software and applications to work from home efficiently and effectively. The two generally go hand in hand but now more than ever. We know that the majority of businesses who can operate remotely have had to let their staff migrate to an office at home but without training them on the essential tools they need to actually do their jobs. It’s so difficult for employers to justify training and IT spend at the moment given the uncertainty, but unless both training and transformation happens, the business wont have the opportunity to succeed and make it through this pandemic”.

Hector Van Duesbury, Business Development Manager, Maximity, Tamworth.