In today’s digital age, IT has become the backbone of nearly every industry, driving innovation, efficiency and competitiveness. Regardless to say, also for Curaçao. When the term IT is used many imagine a group of people, working behind their laptops, writing long colorful gibberish sentences, decorated by commas, question marks and hashtags. People that can code, in whatever language that may be (Java, JavaScript, C++ etc.), are incredibly important within the IT industry. As important are the ones that understand businesses and business processes. To be able to work in IT one must not be able to code. There is softer side to IT.
Business IT professionals focus on the reasons for the existence of software. What are the needs, in IT jargon: requirements, of a particular business? How can software or an app assist the business to meet their goals? The primary focus lies on using IT to improve business processes, achieve strategic objectives and enhance overall efficiency. Here is a concrete example:
A car rental company on the island of Curaçao receives around 50 requests per day. E-mailing a confirmation to every customer takes a lot of time. The business wishes for a system that could send an automatic e-mail to its customers regarding the confirmation of their order. A business requirement. The IT team can now go to work to make sure that this is possible, saving the company a lot of time while at the same time improving their service.
Finding out what systems should do for an organization is the business IT professionals’ best quality. This exercise has proven to be a long and difficult process. IT professionals have developed extensive techniques to identify these requirements. The ability to identify and understand business requirements can be developed, through courses for example, but are mostly developed on the job. It is almost like discovering new pieces of a puzzle by asking the right questions, drawing, observing processes and reading business documents.
Knowing a lot about certain industries or business areas, through operational experience for example, also gives you a head start as an IT business professional. Businesses digitize their processes, entirely or partially. Having knowledge about these processes gives you the ability to faster understand issues or inefficiencies a business may face. IT business professionals usually focus on industries (e.g. aviation, tourism, logistics, public sector) or on a business process (e.g. marketing, finance, supply chain, warehousing). Specialists focus on a business process within an industry (e.g. Finance within the retail sector). There is also the possibility to develop expertise on a specific stream within a business process. Finance IT professionals for example, could be expert on the procure-to-pay stream within Finance; this process stream regards when a business buys a product all the way to when the business pays for this product.
Concluding, IT is for everyone, whether it’s the men and women that write code or the ones that discover what is to be coded. If you have industry or business process knowledge, are analytical, like puzzles and have an interest in IT, you might want to explore your options. IT, also on Curaçao, is booming. Joining this thriving industry as an IT business professional is easier thank you think!
