Okay, so 20 years is arbitrary, it just happens to match up to my time in my current industry. Main thing is, I'm not looking for discussion around COVID changes, unless you happen to think they'll create permanent differences moving forwards.
What I'm interested in are personal perspectives. You don't especially need to justify your experience against world trends, or anything. Just how has your industry changed over the long term, in terms of being a working environment.
Is it better or worse?
Is the pay and conditions better or worse?
Where is it headed?
Just stick to the big ticket items, I guess.
I'll give my take on my industry to kick things off
INDUSTRY - ERP Software Consulting
LOCATION - Australia
So, the key differences from when I commenced in the industry are;
1) Increased specialisation
2) Increased remote work
3) Cost cutting around service delivery
4) Movement of software products to the cloud
There is some interplay between all these things, since the technology now supports more remote work and support.
There has been cost pressure around implementations and support which has encouraged off-shore work. For a relatively expensive, on shore resource like me that hasn't been too dramatic in terms of impact, since I have a lot of experience and holistic knowledge to differentiate myself from remote resources who are cheap. Basically, there is a place for both.
My concern is that I got into the industry via a support position...something which is increasingly now not available to young people in Australia. And support has become very 'colour by numbers' compared to the remote consulting type structure it used to have. It really has to be that way when you have people unfamiliar with businesses offering advice on system usage.
Until now, I haven't seen that model as particularly sustainable, but....(leading to my next point)...
Moving software to the cloud has clear advantages. In terms of my role, though, it is severely limiting in terms of value-add consulting. Integrations become trickier (without using cloud based iPaaS services), custom scripting, db triggers and the like become borderline impossible, and the client is effectively limited to the configuration options in software, out of the box.
Whilst great in a general sense, being limited in this way is a MAJOR change to my industry, in the complex whole-of-business systems space. All of a sudden my ability to look at a process, and determine ways to improve it may simply be unsupportable by the tools, even given a level of technical and database knowledge, due to access and upgradability.
This whole area is still playing out in Australia, very much as we speak. On many different ERP platforms, clients are trying to transition to the cloud, and hitting these points of pain and adjustment.
What I'm interested in are personal perspectives. You don't especially need to justify your experience against world trends, or anything. Just how has your industry changed over the long term, in terms of being a working environment.
Is it better or worse?
Is the pay and conditions better or worse?
Where is it headed?
Just stick to the big ticket items, I guess.
I'll give my take on my industry to kick things off
INDUSTRY - ERP Software Consulting
LOCATION - Australia
So, the key differences from when I commenced in the industry are;
1) Increased specialisation
2) Increased remote work
3) Cost cutting around service delivery
4) Movement of software products to the cloud
There is some interplay between all these things, since the technology now supports more remote work and support.
There has been cost pressure around implementations and support which has encouraged off-shore work. For a relatively expensive, on shore resource like me that hasn't been too dramatic in terms of impact, since I have a lot of experience and holistic knowledge to differentiate myself from remote resources who are cheap. Basically, there is a place for both.
My concern is that I got into the industry via a support position...something which is increasingly now not available to young people in Australia. And support has become very 'colour by numbers' compared to the remote consulting type structure it used to have. It really has to be that way when you have people unfamiliar with businesses offering advice on system usage.
Until now, I haven't seen that model as particularly sustainable, but....(leading to my next point)...
Moving software to the cloud has clear advantages. In terms of my role, though, it is severely limiting in terms of value-add consulting. Integrations become trickier (without using cloud based iPaaS services), custom scripting, db triggers and the like become borderline impossible, and the client is effectively limited to the configuration options in software, out of the box.
Whilst great in a general sense, being limited in this way is a MAJOR change to my industry, in the complex whole-of-business systems space. All of a sudden my ability to look at a process, and determine ways to improve it may simply be unsupportable by the tools, even given a level of technical and database knowledge, due to access and upgradability.
This whole area is still playing out in Australia, very much as we speak. On many different ERP platforms, clients are trying to transition to the cloud, and hitting these points of pain and adjustment.