Building a Winning IT Team

We all know how critical digital technology is to the retail business in 2022 and meeting the expectations of customers in this regard should be a top priority for all CIOs moving forwards – see the first article in this series for more details.

However, any retailer, no matter how large or prolific, is going to struggle to meet those expectations without the right people in place to build, run, and maintain the infrastructure necessary to facilitate digital transformation.

That means building a skilled and experienced IT team – something many companies are struggling to achieve in the post-pandemic world.

A Buyers’ Market

The job market right now is heavily skewed in favour of candidates – especially in skilled work. The fallout from the Great Resignation combined with the long-running skills shortage in the world of IT and coding means those with the most highly desired ability can pick and choose the companies they work for.

This means retailers looking to attract the absolute best IT talent to help make their digital transformation a success need to work on making their workplace as alluring as possible to potential candidates

This need to become more attractive to candidates goes beyond simple remuneration as well. During the COVID-19 crisis, people have got used to a more balanced work/life split and are looking to continue this pattern even as the worst days of the pandemic fade into memory.

This means CIOs looking to build the best IT team possible, need to work with HR departments to make sure more flexible working arrangements are available such as working from home or a hybrid model.

The Team

Working arrangements aside, you need to make sure your team has the right people in the most appropriate roles.

You need people with customer experience/support skills who can work directly with the end users of your IT systems to help them overcome any issues. Gone are the days when IT staff could hide in a back office somewhere and now need to be far more involved with other people in the organisation.

Network or service engineers will be the ones building the infrastructure necessary for digital transformation as well as managing the majority of the overall IT and application delivery. They will need experience in, not only physical technological systems, but cloud integration as well.

Every team needs a leader, and the project manager is your IT departments. Their role is to coordinate timelines and budgets for all initiatives and projects and make sure everything runs to schedule and within the team’s means and remit. They will be required to properly gather requirements, create project scopes, coordinate and communicate with teams, plan and schedule migrations/rollouts/training/etc.

Finally, process management will be responsible for Identifying, building, and managing the processes in which support is delivered throughout the company. The goal is to make sure the environment the IT team is operating in remain stable and dependable and avoid chronic issues.

Final Thoughts

There are certainly additional roles which make an IT team run more effectively, but the ones described above should form the core of any solid digital transformation effort.

Focus on making your workplace as attractive as possible to the discerning post-pandemic worker and make sure the essential roles are filled and you’ll be well on your way to building a winning IT team.

Building a winning IT team is set to be a hot topic at Retail CIO Connect 2022, being held in June at Sopwell House, St Albans, UK.

Download the agenda today for more information and insights.