The digital age is putting a lot of pressure on organizations to react, adapt, and evolve along with new technology. With the more forward thinking leaders already looking at how they can transform, it’s time to evaluate your own strategy and ask yourself, are you looking ahead or will you be stuck in the past?

The first place to look in this journey is at your workforce. Are they empowered to learn new skills or are they settling with what they know? The key to success here is motivating your employees to add new skills to their tool belt and allow them to keep up with today’s changing world. Easier said then done, right? It is important to start out this upskilling process by identifying the problems that need to be solved and finding the right resource to solve them.

In a report put together by the Shared Services and Outsourcing Network’s research team, they found that the two largest skill gaps were in data analytics and automation. This comes to almost no surprise as automation has been transforming today’s world for the past few years. Moving from RPA to AI, automation is proving itself to be a key function of any organization looking to separate itself from the competition.

To gain further knowledge on the topic the SSON team looked to Silicon Valley to benchmark how organization should measure their journey. Why Silicon Valley? The answer is simple, they have stood at the forefront of embracing new skills and technology since the early 2000s, so why not go to them to see how a successful strategy should be built. [Benchmarking information can be found here]

While this cultural shift and call for change may not be welcomed with open arms by all your employees, it is more important now than ever to try and motivate the unmotivated to add to their skillset.  The world is changing, have you prepared your organization to change with it?