BENGALURU:While the Indian IT sector continues to lay off employees in its shift towards automation, a dearth for leadership, coupled with reservations about data security, is hindering the digital disruption. For engineers, this means there won’t be a spur in the job market within the automated systems companies are putting in place.
IT firms are yet to address issues at the ground level even as engineers are having to convince their clients about new automated processes.
“Clients are not yet comfortable with this shift. For those of us working on projects in the banking and insurance sector, we are having to hardsell automation to our clients. They are traditional in their approach when it comes to data security and are not entirely convinced to go digital,” a software engineer project manager of an MNC told Express. Worsening the situation is the lack of guidance from seniors as no one is clued into automated processes, the engineer added.
At present, the digital technologies’ disruption is only 14 per cent of a total turnover of 154-billion in the IT industry in India, said Ashok Pamidi of Nasscom. The digital disruption is expected to touch 40 per cent by 2025. Even though there were around 2 lakh employees trained and deployed for digital technologies, when it came to leadership, it is still a challenge, Pamidi added.
As for fear perceptions around data security, Pamidi opined that many of the technologies have still not evolved and more standards and protocols had to be evolved in the coming days. “For example in IoT, a lot of innovation is happening and standards and protocols have to get established.”
Ravikumar Sreedharan, managing director of Unisys India, said it was true the financial services sector had seen increased risks due to phishing, email compromise and ransomware as the business processes got increasingly automated. “But, it doesn’t mean these sectors are not ready for automation; they just need new approaches and thinking to mitigate these new risks,” he added.