COVID-19 has accelerated digitalization to an extent that was hardly imaginable before. Companies that were already well positioned had to step up to enable home offices for more employees, and companies that had not yet dealt with digitalization had to start doing so in order to remain competitive. In this way, a global pandemic has achieved what had previously been slow: Driving digitization forward in German companies. But of course, we are still a long way from the end and with this further development, completely new challenges arise.
A study has now compiled the IT Trends 2023, which are strongly branched with this development. It provides information on where demand has increased, which technologies are becoming more popular, and what companies should look out for. For this, data from over 30,000 companies and 65,000 freelancers from the tech industry were analyzed, especially for France, Spain, and Germany. This much can be said: the digital transformation is far from over.
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Especially for the IT infrastructure, the development of new applications and IT security, Corona meant increased requirements on the company side. It is important that not only the entire team is able to work digitally in the home office, but that this also meets security and regulatory requirements. Especially the beloved data protection plays a significant role here again. But applications that promote the collaboration and efficiency of one's own teams and employees have also gained in popularity.
Conversely, this means two things for IT Trends 2023:
The skills sought and demanded by companies are increasingly specialized
And
Ecosystems in the cloud are growing in popularity, but also require deeper knowledge and skills.
Unfortunately, just because the demand for these services is increasing does not mean that there are suddenly thousands of new IT talents waiting to be hired on the labor market. On the contrary, the trend in the IT industry is continuing: qualified personnel are scarce. This is not the only reason why companies are relying more and more on external expertise. Also, due to the economic uncertainty in recent months, more companies are relying on the short-term and flexible support of external IT specialists in the form of freelancers.
A trend that has gained momentum, especially in recent months, is called no-code and low-code. This means that digital applications, apps, or services can be developed with almost no programming. The advantage of this is clear: companies can circumvent the shortage of skilled workers in certain areas by simplifying the creation of prototypes and the testing of new products, which can then be realized by internal teams without the need for IT specialists.
This is particularly attractive for small and medium-sized, but also very small enterprises. No-code and low-code platforms are particularly impressive due to their ease of use and the speed with which new developments can be carried out. That is why such services are perfect for prototypes, tests and iterative further development.
Low-code and no-code thus benefit from the fact that IT skills are increasingly in demand, but also in short supply. In addition, there is a wide range of products that cover almost all wishes: Websites, marketplaces, e-commerce, mobile apps or even databases, such as Airtable.
However, no-code and low-code automation platforms are particularly popular as they can significantly boost productivity, especially for growth and marketing teams. Such automation platforms connect applications that are already in use, such as CRM, emails, databases or accounting. This automates the flow of data and eliminates the need to manually copy and paste data. We have already compiled a list of the top no-code automation tools here.
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Migration to the cloud was also accelerated again by Corona. Growing demand for home offices has also meant that cloud applications are often more useful. With this rise in cloud technology, the demand for professionals in this field is naturally growing. In particular, data analysts, cloud architects or architects for IT are often in demand, but much less frequently offered among freelancers. In addition, there are tried and tested requirements for data engineers, software engineers or CRM consultants.
Here, sometimes huge gaps open up between supply and demand. And of course, data protection requirements are particularly high in this area as well. However, it is a myth that cloud services per se are less secure than on-premise software. The development also goes hand in hand with the fact that small and medium-sized enterprises in particular largely worked from home during the crisis.
For both of these IT trends 2023, however, it is true that the developments and demand are strongly sector-dependent. While many sectors had to struggle with uncertainty, market collapses or even insolvencies, sectors such as pharmaceuticals or e-commerce experienced a strong upswing. They were able to further advance the digital transformation, but could not prevent wages for freelancers from suffering a slump.
Nevertheless, the demand for tech experts grew especially in the areas of infrastructure and security, content-related marketing, SEO management, crisis communication, design (UI and UX) and human resources. Specifically, this means that the two programming languages Python and TypeScript gained popularity. Python applications are often used for data science and machine learning and impress with the simplicity of programming as well as productivity. Typescript, on the other hand, benefits from the increasing popularity of Microsoft's Visual Studio Code.
In principle, these IT Trends 2023 confirm well-known facts: The market for IT specialists is scarce and will become even scarcer. The increased demand on the corporate side does not go hand in hand with a growing supply at the same speed. This is precisely why the importance of external service providers and freelancers who can bridge and support an acute shortage is increasing. In addition, they are usually independent, are used to adapting flexibly to new conditions from the project business and can open up new perspectives for companies.
If we combine the two trends of cloud and no-code as well as low-code platforms, then two software applications that cover just this quickly catch the eye: Zapier and Make. They are both low-code automation platforms that aim to link thousands of cloud applications. In this way, companies create automated data flows, optimize their own processes and increase their own productivity.
As an independent automation agency, we offer exactly these services: Process analysis, optimization and subsequent automation with exactly the applications and apps you use. Together we find individual solutions that are flexible and scalable. Feel free to contact us.
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On the methodology of the study:
The freelancer platform Malt from France has analyzed the data of more than 30,000 companies and 65,000 freelancers for tech and data in France, Spain and Germany. The findings are based on more than 500,000 searches on the marketplace and the profiles of freelancers. Company size data is based on more than 13,000 jobs in 2022.
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