Are IT experts in danger of being commoditised?

01 January 2012

It’s 2012, just. The world is an ever-increasingly  e-commerce driven society. We buy our music, gifts, food and clothing on-line. We are, by nature, becoming commodity buyers. This online trend started at a transactional level with items like DVDs and CDs, but is fast moving into what were luxury goods; designer brands, high-end jewellery and watches are now commonplace purchases through online stores.

In short, we are starting to commoditise under our “e-commerce” umbrella that was once viewed as a careful and considered purchase. It’s no great surprise that, fresh from the comfort of our own home and our own online purchasing habits, we then head out to work to buy “things”. These “things” include goods and services as well as expertise for our businesses to function. We are increasingly taking the same attitude that we may have only used the night before to buy a DVD or a camera online,
and assume that business goods and services can be bought as commodities bought.

We focus on things like margins, rate cards, day rates and unit prices. We look for volume discounts, delayed payment schemes and rebate structures. In short, we go out to buy what are, in essence, things which can have a very serious effect on the fortunes of our companies as if we were buying our bananas online. Difficulties then arise in that, even in current tough economic times that we now find ourselves in, people with the talent and expertise to make sound commercial decisions are still in short supply.

These rare individuals know what they are worth. They speak in terms of the value that they can bring to a team, function or organisation. They deal in the cumulative knowledge and experience that they take with them onto every assignment. They really know that they bring expertise that cannot be immediately placed in a box and sold for 16% margin or £600 per day with a volume discount.

It would be biased to say this applied to every profile that every company might consider hiring in 2012, but it will apply to a sample of them. Your recruitment consultancy should be honest and professional enough to guide you in which roles can be bought as commodities and which are serious purchases. Subject matter experts commonly want to be “sold” by a subject matter expert, not put on public auction where day rate and margin are the only bargaining chips.

We wouldn’t recommend that you don’t “buy smart”. But you ought to think of the perception that commodity recruitment can sometimes create’ with rare-breed specialists joining your business. If your preferred supplier list doesn’t include some speciality providers to deliver flexibility and niche skills through a “delicatessen” service, we would advise reviewing that list so you have providers to deliver specialists and others who can deliver generalist staff in bulk as you need them.

Alf Davis, Director, Modis.

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