The Project Management Skills That Matter

Project managers must stay abreast of the change in industry trends and develop skills to implement technologies that can keep organisations competitive and forward thinking.

This article will focus on four main areas in IT project management that are currently in high demand for good project managers.

Salesforce CRM

Having a solid CRM strategy is key for any organisation wanting to stay competitive and thrive in the long run. As digitalisation empowers businesses and consumers alike, it is essential that the CRM right solutions are set in place to improve staff productivity and the overall customer experience.

The Salesforce platforms are used by organisations all around the world to enhance their ability to form higher levels of trust with their clients. By using CRM platforms, businesses can improve their interactions with customers by utilising a full gambit of communication channels to track and analyse customer behaviour and activity. This can in turn improve customer retention, improve brand reputation and ultimately drive sales.

As businesses continuously face evolving technology and the increased demand for tailored customer service, it is more vital than ever for organisations to future-proof their CRM strategy.

Organisations utilise the cloud services of Salesforce for marketing, sales, customer service, as well as customised AI systems

Enterprise REsource Planning (eRP)

With an ERP system, organisations can consolidate the core business processes into one platform, some key examples are finance, HR, supply chain, and procurement. ERP is a key tool in any complex organisation as it provides benefits such as increased productivity, fast tracked insights and performance data, simplified business processes and improved business agility.

The popular ERP systems in the market are SAP and Oracle. Both have been around for over 20 years and enjoy a dominant presence across many industries. In recent times, however, the trend is moving away from such monolithic systems and smaller micro-service ERP solutions that can support and integrate with digital channels much more readily have become popular. ERP is no longer a domain tightly held by the global giants but, like many dominant technologies of the past, has become a mainstream service that organisations can simply tap into on demand.

As digital technologies continue to evolve and become even more complex, it is vital that project managers stay abreast of the full breadth of technological trends.

Whichever technology niche you are currently operating in, there will be constant updates to the technology used, so being able to stay on top of it all will allow your skills to not go out of demand in the long run.

Digital Transformation

Many companies (including the non-IT organisations) are faced with the challenges of restructuring their products and services to become “more responsive to customer needs, more proactive in gathering client feedback, and more adaptive to changing market conditions” (Butkus, 2019). Project managers play a key role in leading organisations to adapt and make progress in the fast changing and increasingly diverse digital world.

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has forced companies to speed up the process of digital transformation. For example in the retail space, all companies now must expand their online presence and focus on leveraging ecommerce and social media to retain and increase their consumer base.

According to a global survey conducted in 2020 by KPMG, 63% of organisations stated that they have increased their digital transformation budget in response to the effects of COVID-19.

Infrastructure transformation (from on-prem to the cloud)

Long gone are the days where servers were stored in large rooms on premise and managed by an extensive team of IT staff. Now, a majority of organisations will use a cloud based system, where all data is stored together and available to access at any time by all team members. As a project manager, understanding how cloud based systems work will greatly enhance demand for their services.

Cloud services are used by all types of organisations both small and large. For instance, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) recently implemented Amazon Web Services (AWS), being one of the first Australian universities to do so. RMIT intends to use this cloud supercomputing facility to advance research in areas such as manufacturing, space and digital health. This allows for greater collaboration between researchers in Australia and worldwide by having a wider access to research and data.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a leading platform which offers cloud computing services that can cater to a wide range of industries and needs of organisations (from data storage to machine learning). AWS offers training and certification programs to help you upskill yourself on your way to leading organisations through transformational journeys