"If knowledge is the engine of the new economy ...
then learning is the fuel that powers it"- Hiro Takeuchi

The 2010 IT Salary and Skills Report from Global Knowledge and Tech Republic surveyed over 19,500 IT professionals worldwide on salary, job satisfaction, current and expected business conditions, tenure, certifcations held and training taken.

One of the conclusions is that training not only improves performance "more than 84% of managers who sent their staff to receive training felt staff members were more effective in their job role after training" but also improves pay "...job performance was the key driver for those who received a raise".

The survey also found a poistive correlation between certifcation and pay. "Overall, professionals who had earned an IT or project management certification during the last five years earned an average of $5,242 more than their counterparts ($85,628 vs. $80,386)." According to the survey, the mean salary in the U.S. for someone with Oracle 10g certifcation was $114,744.

This survey is, in fact, just the latest in a long line of research going back many years that points to the benefits of training. One study by Ann Bartel at Columbia University in the United States, calculated that the rate of return to the enterprise from training was in the order of 35 per cent, assuming that skills depreciate at ten per cent per annum (a half life of 5.4 years). Many other studies in the United States, Europe, the U.K. and Austrlia have reported similar findings including Holzer et al, 1993, for the US, Alba-Ramirez, 1994, for Spain, d’Arcimoles 1997, Harel and Tzafrir 1999, Bartel 2000, Richard and Johnson 2001, NCVER, 2001, for Australia, Zwick, 2002, for Germany, Boselie et al 2003, Paul and Anantharaman 2003, Aragon-Sanchez 2003.

See Smartsoft Computing for help with your Oracle and other IT training requirements.

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Note: The information provided in these article are intended to provide general information only.  This information is not intended to constitute expert or professional advice and should not be relied upon as such.  Specialist legal advice should always be sought for your particular circumstances.

In 2004 KPMG's research revealed that I.T. project failure is "rampant" with 56% of firms having classified 1 or more I.T. projects as a failure in 2003.

Other research by Gartner has discovered that a full 40% of I.T. projects are canceled and 28% are over budget and/or late.

Research by Bloor has shown that the failure rate of I.T. projects has not changed since the 1970s which proves that the I.T. industry suffers over and over again from the same problems of

• under investment in training;
• too many manual processes;
• poorly tuned systems;
• programmers and project managers under too much pressure;
• hiring the wrong people

Fortunately research by other organisations has highlighted the solutions to these problems:

1. Train your team - financial and other returns from training can be between 30% and 7000% (NCVER, Australia 2005).
2. Automate your I.T. systems - both production and development. Research by Sun discovered that 80% of system failures are caused by a combination of human errors and process errors. System failures can cost up to $4000/minute (Standish Group, 2001).
3. Tune your existing systems - $23bn is wasted on I.T. including over specified hardware (Gartner).
4. Reduce stress by creating realistic plans. The biggest cause of stress is unrealistic workloads, 12.8 million working days were lost in the U.K. in 2004 due to stress, depression and anxiety (Health & Safety Executive).
5. Hold design reviews - "... the single most effective way of identifying errors and thereby reducing costs" (Professor McDermid, York University, England 2001)
6. Prepare for the coming skills shortage - in a recent survey of 3800 IT industry employees, AbsoluteIT found that two thirds were seeking new jobs and the April 2010 KPMG and Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) report on jobs shows that IT and computing workers are the most sought after of eight sector verticals
7. Hire the best - the best developers are twice as productive as the next best, but worse than that is the fact some developers have negative productivity, anything they do has to be redone by somebody else. (Professor McDermid, York University, England 2001)

By following these seven steps you can ensure your I.T. projects don't add to the statistics on failures.

For expert assitance help with your Oracle projects including upgrades, application development and performance tuning, contact Smartsoft Computing.