Which talent issues pose the greatest risk to executing your strategy? Attracting specialized skills, retaining top performers, building AI capabilities at scale, or succession planning for critical roles? Or something else?

Enterprise architecture is our top talent issue. We have undertaken a major transformation to build, transform, and rebuild our entire Center of Excellence (COE) organization. Business analyst skills, especially those related to S4 SAP and engineering, are also increasingly difficult to find. As we move competencies to best cost countries, it has become particularly tough to source talent for business analyst, solution architect, and enterprise architecture roles. This is an ongoing struggle for us.

Our organization has grown through acquisition, bringing in both people and platforms. Some of these platforms have been developed over a 20-year period, and in many cases, subject matter expertise is concentrated in just one or two key individuals. This creates a risk, as those people become essential for anything related to those platforms, leading to bottlenecks and challenges in distributing knowledge more broadly. While this is something we can address over time, it does introduce risk and can slow progress. Aside from that, we do not see significant talent risks. We are fortunate to have a strong culture, offer fully remote work, and provide unlimited PTO, which helps us attract and retain the talent we need. We have found a good balance between accountability and opportunity, so attrition and attraction are not concerns for us, but we do have a lot of work to do.

All of the above are relevant for us. As a smaller company with a significant investment in technology, our greatest challenge is finding the so-called unicorns, individuals who possess a broad range of specialized skills and can cover entire areas on their own. Unlike larger organizations that can have three or four people with overlapping skills, we often need a single person who can dive deep and manage everything in a particular domain. This creates a network of strong individual contributors, supported by a mix of external partners who can provide depth when needed. Our biggest challenge is finding the right balance and mix of internal and external resources who can work together effectively.