Why is the boundary between technological and business skills increasingly fading?

The Skills of the Future Should Be Focused on Technology Through the Lens of Business Opportunities

In this context, it is not certain to what extent these will be technical skills, but rather business and soft skills. According to Georgi Georgiev, Head of the Information Technology Department at ProCredit Bank, if a person is determined to improve their skills and is eager to grow, they will always succeed not just in adapting to the changes taking place but also in becoming part of them.

In the face of an increasingly challenging labor market, could the process of skill enhancement and retraining be the key to sustainable success?

As a company, we believe that the two main components, the prerequisites for a successful and sustainable business, are people and technology. That is why ProCredit Bank invests focused efforts in these two directions. Their combination leads to achieving a high level of digitization – conducting business with the help of technology. Their use would not be possible without the people who integrate them into the company’s business model. This happens by following the principle of continuous improvement and building the knowledge of our colleagues. Along with the results of their work, this creates a sense of satisfaction and belonging to the company. Therefore, the sustainable development of the business and technology in a company requires the continuous development of its staff’s skills. That is why training, education, and the qualifications of our colleagues are key to us.

With this understanding, the Bank invests a significant amount of effort and resources into employee training. Our goal is to develop personnel who are adapted to the rapidly changing environment, both outside and inside the Bank. People who think and create solutions and products without wasting time on routine tasks. Training and skill enhancement motivate our colleagues, as along with new knowledge, we implement new technologies and products. These, in turn, lead to better business results, and accordingly, people see the impact of their work. We believe that only in this way can we have a sustainable team creating a successful business.

What Are the Main Drivers of This Process?

The drivers of the process of skill enhancement and qualification have two aspects – external and internal. External factors include the rapidly changing market, along with the technologies that drive these changes. This requires people to acquire new skills in both technological and business terms – often a combination of both. Internal factors are defined by the corporate environment, culture, and values, which should encourage and support the process of continuous learning. This is where the role of the company’s management comes in, which builds the culture and values of the organization and integrates the process of continuous learning and improvement into them.

What Are the Technical Skills of the Future? And What Skills Should People Outside the IT and Technology Sector Focus On?

The boundary between technological and business skills is increasingly fading, as is the boundary between technology and business as a whole. Fewer and fewer businesses do not include at least one technology, and often more, in their business model. Therefore, I would say that the technical skills of the future should focus on technology through the lens of business opportunities to use them. In this regard, it is not certain how technical they will be, but rather business and soft skills. The same is true for people outside the IT sector. In fact, they are increasingly rare in their pure form. More and more non-technological roles in companies now require knowledge in areas like Agile, Scrum, understanding basic and not-so-basic technical concepts, skills to differentiate between different platforms, solutions, and even programming languages. On the other hand, most technical roles in new digital companies should already have business knowledge, be able to speak or at least understand its language, and the process of creating digital products. They should be empathetic towards end customers, think through the lens of business, and be part of the feedback loop from users, and so on.

Based on this, I believe that technical and business skills will soon blend into a much more homogeneous entity, which will require knowledge from both areas. Thus, roles that were once "non-technical" will be able to function in the context of a digitalized reality. And conversely, previously purely technical roles will be adapted and will understand the business environment, which is now digital. Of course, for different positions, the ratio of technical, business, and soft skills will vary, but it will be much more balanced than it has been so far. This is evident in our cross-functional Agile teams, composed of all the roles needed to create a final customer product.

What Is the Most Effective Approach to Skill Enhancement – Sharing Experience and Knowledge Within the Company or Bringing in External Knowledge? What Are the Best Practices in Your Company?

I would say, based on our experience in the bank, that the effective approach to skill enhancement should reasonably and balanced combine three aspects: internal practices, external training, and working with external technological partners.

Sharing internal experience is very important because it helps spread knowledge throughout the entire team and preserve it. Additionally, internal sharing provides flexibility in terms of the process and training tools – internship programs, mentoring practices, one-off or regular internal seminars on various topics. However, limiting oneself only to internal practices also has considerable risks related to the inevitable, even if unconscious, compartmentalization of the team and missing out on new market opportunities. Therefore, in addition to these practices, which are part of our corporate culture, we use services from different training companies and online platforms. The third aspect of our approach to enhancing skills and accumulated knowledge in the Bank is our work with external technological partners. First of all, involving this resource in developing different products in the Bank, including the implementation of entirely external solutions, broadens the range of client services and automated internal processes. Moreover, it leads to a stable flow of new knowledge and know-how, which later stays in the bank and enriches the company’s overall experience and worldview.