A new technology role is emerging within organizations, "Business Technology," also called Business Applications or Business Systems. This is the team charged with rolling out apps, integrations, and automations in their companies, according to State of Business Technology Report, prepared by Atomik Research for Workato.
The rapidly growing field resides within IT and works with business teams — from finance, human resources, operations, and sales — to help impact initiatives through buying and managing applications, and integrating and automating workflows throughout them.
The roles in a business technology team are expected to encompass more than 15 million jobs by 2022, supporting all business verticals. This job market growth is driven by the proliferation of SaaS applications and continual investment in Enterprise Software — the fastest growing spend in IT at a rate of 10.5 percent year over year. It is also driven by the need for organizations to drive transformation and innovation by aligning IT and business goals.
The report includes responses from two separate surveys; the first of more than 100 full-time Business Technology leaders and the second of more than 300 HR, marketing, sales, finance, and support professionals, manager level and above in the United States.
Key findings include:
Business Technology Leaders Drive Productivity and Innovation
With the continued rise of SaaS applications, Business Technology leaders bring a holistic view of the company across individual functional departments.
■ 94 percent of Business Technology respondents agree or strongly agree that Business Technology Teams are key changemakers and drivers of an organization's productivity and innovation.
Existing Tools Are Slowing Down Business Transformation
■ 82 percent of Business Technology Leaders report being backlogged with their projects with Finance being the biggest culprit at 71 percent, followed by Sales and HR.
■ 44 percent indicate that tools at their disposal are slowing them down followed by tactical, day-to-day firefighting at 42 percent.
Job Frustrations, Challenges Evolving with New Role
■ 91 percent of Business Technology respondents are frustrated with their role, citing the speed with which they are able to respond to Lines of Business demands as their number one frustration. 72 percent feel overworked.
■ Only 18 percent of Business Technology leaders feel "very appreciated" by their Lines Of Business colleagues.
■ 40 percent are frustrated with their current integration/automation tool.
Business Technology and Lines of Business Aren't Fully Aligned
■ Employee onboarding and offboarding is universally acknowledged as important.
■ Business Technology respondents cite "hire to retire" procedures for employee on-boarding and off-boarding as the most desired automations (37%).
■ Lines of Business respondents cite it as the second most desired (26%).
■ Lines of Business respondents identified "Approval Workflows" as their most desired automation, Business Technology rated it in the bottom three.
■ "Procure to Pay" is among the lowest desired automations for Lines Of Business but in the top 3 for Business Technology.
"There is a foundational shift happening in the role of IT, from providing infrastructure and provisioning hardware to working within business teams to optimize the systems and processes they rely on to help drive business impact," said Vijay Tella, Co-Founder and CEO of Workato.
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