If you don't do it, somebody else will !

[cognostechie]

That's exactly what seems to have happened ! With the majority of IT projects having failed across the globe, the management of companies started realizing that's it is time to find an alternative. Surveys have revealed that in most companies, IT can only 'manage' a system but not 'make' it. If the system is already working they can manage it but if it has issues, IT consumes millions of dollars and months/years of effort and still cannot stabilize the system whether the system is BI or SAP or Oracle or some other. I have personally worked for companies
who had that kind of situation so I have seen this first hand. Agreed that this does not apply to every company but it does apply to the majority.

Reason - Lack of skilled resources, favoritism and politics. My personal opinion as well as what the reviews say. All other departments have qualified resources to do their job but it is IT that has the least amount of skilled resources in their team. To add to this, the leadership practices favoritism to add more unskilled resources to provide career opportunities to their people and the work is intentionally delayed to prove to the management that the job is very complicated. In some cases, this delay is also to make sure that the budget is consumed so that they can ask for more money for next year.

Result - Marketing, Finance and other departments highly dissatisfied with IT and fed up with the excuses.

Conclusion - Enough is Enough ! Find an alternative.

So here comes a software company which has built an industry specific solution which has everything that the business would need and it is cloud based so now no need to have multiple systems like ERP and CRM and BI to be on premises. No need to have all that hardware. No need to integrate systems. The scariest thoguht of all just turned into a convincing answer and that is - The transition from all these systems into a new one does not require a massive investment because it is cloud based ! No need to tolerate any more crap from IT so just let them go !
So this company which implemented this approach fired the entire ERP and BI team last month after suffering for the last 6 yrs.

Good - Finally, the companies will have proper systems to work with which will result in reduction of cost, increase of productivity and profits and a proper work environment for those people who have dealt with the torture inflicted upon them by IT by delaying things, providing wrong data and having them digest the blame that it is them who created
the problem in the first place by being too picky to have demanded something that simply cannot be achieved with the technology available.

Bad - This is what I can't figure out so I am posting this here to share thoughts and get opinions. When this approach becomes popular and takes full effect in the next 5 yrs, will this result in a massive cut on IT jobs? Economic slowdown? No need for BI and other departments in the companies?

[bdbits]

I hope you were not one of those fired.  :-\

Companies usually outsource to save money (cloud is pretty equivalent to outsourcing). Sometimes it does, often it does not. They just end up paying the same or usually more to the outside vendor, in my experience. And it most often involves some changes in business processes, because no software I am aware of can completely adapt to arbitrary business processes. But companies like cloud/outsourcing because there is no HR commitment, and they can sue somebody if the systems go south. At least that is my opinion and experience.

There is already a pretty severe shortage of skilled IT people, at least here in the US. Those people are unlikely to lose their jobs, particularly if they have the good sense to also learn how the business/organizational side works. That is always going to be in demand as far as I can see into the future.

[cognostechie]

No, I didn't get fired because I had already left the job market and started my own company some time back.

I see what you are saying about the cloud and the scenario in the IT world regarding resources but I was referring to the new trend of having Industry-specific software. The problem that I indicated is that no software is built to provide everything that a company would need and that is what causes to have
multiple software and hence the integration/consulting/resource problem etc. but that's the current scenario. In current scenario, the systems built are for specific business areas so an HR system cannot handle Sales. To address the issues arising out of this, the trend is shifting to making industry specific systems and those systems will be designed to accommodate every work for that particular industry . It will have manufacturing, supply chain, BI etc including all analytics required. The idea is to remove dependency on legacy systems and have a one integrated system to provide all. It is actually working and companies
are investing in it. Though I do not want to write anything that will point to the company I am referring to but here is a link to another company which
is making such systems. This might explain the future trend where we are going to:

http://www.infor.com/company/news/pressroom/pressreleases/whole-foods-market-retail-partnership/