Employees in India want more training in big data and cloud. But are cos ready to invest?

While cloud and big data are two emerging technologies, a recent study highlights that businesses are not equipped to train professionals around these technologies. A latest study by Skillsoft highlights that professionals insist better skill training in big data and cloud solutions is required for their career advancement, however not many decision makers believe their businesses is equipped to leverage big data.

The Skillsoft report offered key insights about how big data and cloud solutions are affecting organisational learning across Asia Pacific, and thus surveyed more than 300 large and medium-sized businesses and organisations across 20 industry sectors in 13 markets across the Asia Pacific region.
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About 65 percent of decision makers in India ranked business intelligence as the greatest benefit of leveraging big data. Further, despite low levels of adoption of cloud solutions and big data in some industries, decision makers and learners alike agree that the benefits of both can drive significant and measureable impact for their respective businesses.
To supplement that, a whopping 73 percent of surveyed respondents also agreed that more training is needed in relation to cloud solutions to help them perform better in their role.

“No longer can decision makers and business professionals ignore the potential that big data and cloud solutions can impact their business outcomes, their team dynamics, and even their own career advancement,” said Aruna Telang, manager, consulting services - Asia, Skillsoft.

“While many decision makers and learners we engaged with categorise themselves as having a limited level of understanding of cloud solutions and/or big data, proactive engagement and the implementation of tailor made learning modules can help organisations move forward and effectively manage their workforce knowledge, growth, capability, and subsequent market expansion.” The research further reports that 63 percent of decision makers in India indicated that they have had to create new roles within their organisation as part of their adoption strategy for cloud solutions, while only 19 percent rated their organisation as underprepared to harness the power of big data.

Measuring the impact/return on investment (ROI) of big data initiatives was the top concern for 51 percent of decision makers with only 33 percent of these decision makers wanting to harness big data to make a measurable impact.

Across organisations in India, it was found that 55 percent have increased their training budgets related to big data in the last 2 years, while more than 50 percent planned to allocate at least 11 percent of their training budget to big data in the coming year.

“Though IT companies are the front-runners in big data adoption and training, it was surprising to see that education and training sector, as well as finance and banking, appear to be more conservative and have limited budgets for such programmes,” said Vinay Pradhan, country manager - India, Skillsoft.

Planning and adoption surrounding big data and cloud solutions seem to exclude the role of learning, as budgets have yet to be allocated to this requirement. The research findings highlighted that most decision makers plan to increase their training budgets next year, so it may be time to consider whether your organisation is investing enough in learning.

“However, both decision makers and learners agree that learning is absolutely key to successful adoption, and that more training is needed.”