How business knowledge help ICT graduates expand their Career prospect?
ICT, information and communication technology, is prodigious, yet evolving, a concept which combines business, people, organization, application, system, network, etc. all together to interact in a digital world. It is the infrastructure and components that are required to keep this era of modern computing consistent. As we are in the midst of the fourth industrial revolution and on the verge of the ubiquitous computing era, ICT is grasping every aspect of daily life. Consequently, it is also leaving its significant impact on business by reshaping business practices through gathering and analyzing information, developing strategic visions, finding the best approach for redesigning the complex processes, and allowing team coordination in the work environment (Akhavan et al., 2006; Attaran, 2004). With this symbiosis relationship between ICT and business, more career prospects are getting introduced to those, the ICT graduates, who have the knowledge to integrate, operate, and manage the ICT enabled systems (Calitz et al., 2011, p. 64). This essay will discuss how having business knowledge helps to expand the career prospect of ICT graduates. As information and communication technology continues to reshape the business organization and their traditional methods, needs for skilled staff who can conduct the functions of the new ICT enabled process are becoming prominent (Versteeg & Bouwman, 2006, p. 94). Moreover, the information systems and the infrastructure that are making the business efficient and digital also requires knowledge of information and communication technology to be designed and developed. And the personnel, who has business knowledge alongside ICT skills, has the advantage over others to get on board and climb up the job position hierarchy.
In my opinion, the major benefit of ICT graduates to have business knowledge is being able to capture the expanding potential job market that is being created as a result of the fusion between business and information and communication technology. The information system is reshaping the organization and redesigning the processes through analyzing data and providing valuable information after filtering out the redundant data. Inventory and warehouse management, operations, transportation, etc. all types of processes are being managed, monitored, and controlled using information systems. Also, strategic-decision making is becoming dynamic and efficient with help of information and communication system (Beeson et al., 2002, pp. 317–329). Management can use it for assessment of current performance, to estimate the annual budget, process the pay slip of the employees, determine how many more employees to recruit or if a wage cut is needed, etc. wide range of decisions and operations. However, to manage and operate these information systems, people with technical knowledge who also can understand the fundamental business process and flow of information are needed. Hence comes more opportunities for the career of ICT graduates with business knowledge. Business analytic, Data scientist, Data engineer, Database Administrator, IT manager, etc. job positions are getting introduced in almost all business organizations with up to $122k average annual salary (Top Jobs for Management Information Systems Degree Majors, CareerExplorer, 2019). So clearly convergence of information system and business is creating new career prospects.
Secondly, having business knowledge creates additional opportunities for ICT graduates inside of pure IT firms too. Because to design and develop the information systems for business organizations, software engineers need to elicit requirements. Proper requirement analysis is a primary factor for reducing the chance of project failure and increasing customer satisfaction (Thayer et al.,1997). And for extracting the business organization’s requirements properly so that the right thing can be delivered, a requirement engineer must have a profound understanding about the business and its processes. That’s why the employers try to recruit those who have the business knowledge to perform the requirement engineering and business analysis. So again business knowledge is helping the ICT graduates to capture more fields.
Also, fundamental business knowledge may help developers while developing systems for business organizations. When developing a project, multiple teams work together. If communication and coordination between the teams are not proper and clear, or developers misinterpret and misunderstood the key design decisions and requirements, then the things may not be developed correctly and the project will become perilous (Ramesh & Dhar, 1992, p. 499). But if the developers have fundamental knowledge about business while developing systems for business organizations, then these risks can be mitigated easily. So the developers who have business knowledge are favored for these types of projects, which increases their demand. Also having a precise idea of what are they doing and what are to occur next, they can do the job more easily and efficiently than others. Thus the employers notice them more than others and so they are more likely to get a raise.
Lastly, knowledge of business may also help employees of an IT firm to get a promotion. Many IT start-ups or companies, for example, e-commerce sites are majorly driven by business practices, and also all the IT companies themselves have business processes of their own which make business knowledge compulsory for the management personnel. To make the company profitable, gain customer trust, and efficiency, the people in the management must have profound business knowledge. Moreover, the chances for error in the process of the company increase in the absence of a clearly defined IT business process which may be ended up compromising all the structure (Veyrat, 2017). So if a position opens and one employee has business knowledge, then he or she is clearly in a better position than others who haven’t to get promoted to the upper level. In this way, business knowledge is once again helping ICT graduates to have a career boost.
In conclusion, more and more new career opportunities for ICT graduates are emerging both in business and IT companies due to digitization and redesigning of business with information and communication technology. To capture these opportunities business knowledge alongside ICT skills is required. So it is clear that having business knowledge will definitely help the ICT graduates to enjoy these expanded career prospects.
References
Akhavan, P., Jafari, M. and Ali-Ahmadi, A.R. (2006), “Exploring the interdependency betweenreengineering and information technology by developing a conceptual model”,BusinessProcess Management Journal, Vol. 12 №4, pp. 517–34.
Attaran, M. (2004), “Exploring the relationship between information technology and businessprocess reengineering”,Information Management, Vol. 41 №5, pp. 585–96.
Beeson, I., Green, S., Sa, J., & Sully, A. (2002). Linking business processes and information systems provision in a dynamic environment. Information Systems Frontiers, 4(3), 317–329.
Calitz, A. P., Greyling, J. H., & Cullen, M. D. M. (2011). ICT career track awareness amongst ICT graduates. Proceedings of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists Conference on Knowledge, Innovation and Leadership in a Diverse, Multidisciplinary Environment — SAICSIT ’11, 59–68. https://doi.org/10.1145/2072221.2072229
Ramesh, B., & Dhar, V. (1992). Supporting systems development by capturing deliberations during requirements engineering. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 18(6), 498–510. https://doi.org/10.1109/32.142872
Thayer, R. H., Bailin, S. C., & Dorfman, M. (1997). Software reuirements engineerings. IEEE Computer Society Press.
Top Jobs for Management Information Systems Degree Majors CareerExplorer. (2019, May 30). CareerExplorer. https://www.careerexplorer.com/careers/collections/careers-for-management-information-systems-majors/
Versteeg, G., & Bouwman, H. (2006). Business architecture: A new paradigm to relate business strategy to ICT. Information Systems Frontiers, 8(2), 91–102. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-006-7973-z
Veyrat, P. (2017, September 8). Know why IT processes are important to administrate a company with efficiency. HEFLO. https://www.heflo.com/blog/bpm/it-business-processes/
