With the marketing and communications industries undergoing swift and constant change in the digital era, IT staffing and services firm TEKsystems recently examined the emerging skillsets that standout digital organizations are seeking, or soon will be.
In advance of the upcoming user-experience event UXPA 2017 International Conference, the firm highlighted study findings that explore design-related marketing priorities within organizations. Data was examined on four subsets based on how organizations self-identified the maturity of their digital marketing efforts.
Key highlights from the survey include:
Less than a quarter of marketing organizations realize full digital maturity—design skills to gain in criticality in next 12 months
Percent of marketing leaders who expect these skill sets to increase in criticality at their organization over the next 12 months
TEKsystems’ take: Design skills are consistently identified as a top need regardless of digital maturity. As companies start to formulate their approach to a digital marketing strategy, there is a nearly unanimous belief that design is a critical need. In fact, it remained a top critical future need as organizations progressed through the integrated and optimized stages of the digital lifecycle. Comparatively, marketing leaders indicate that over the next 12 months, digital design skills will have a higher impact than either analytics or development skills on digitally mature organizations.
Nearly two-thirds of organizations rely on internal sources to address design skills needs—digital agencies rank high as external source
TEKsystems’ take: Regardless of digital maturity, approximately two-thirds of marketing leaders consistently default to an internal model for supporting design needs. This may indicate a preference for more control and consistency of the brand, or that the bulk of the design work can be done with internal talent, and organizations shift to an external partner for more specialized needs. If they do look externally, it appears they take a two-pronged approach of either hiring a separate digital agency or augmenting their design staff through a contractor model.
“It’s clear that organizations with optimized digital marketing strategies have taken the guesswork out of determining which skills they need and how to best source the skills that provide the best possible customer/user experience,” said Jason Hayman, market research manager at TEKsystems, in a news release.
“While it’s true that they have more budget devoted to this task, their approach is carefully considered, and they prefer to first look internally, then, when necessary, externally to enterprise integration and consulting firms for the skill sets they need,” Hayman added. “Those skill sets, including analytics, development and design, are key to not only developing the features and functionality that matter most when it comes to the user experience, but also to measuring the effectiveness of the various tools being created and deployed.”
In March, TEKsystems issued a report, Less Than One-Quarter of Organizations Employ Optimal Digital Marketing Strategies, with its findings on the current state of digital marketing initiatives within organizations. The firm will provide a central resource of additional research in June 2017.
