Lack of skills and talent still top hinderance for digital transformation in pharma, says GlobalData

The rapid pace of technological advancement has outstripped the ability of traditional training programs to keep up, creating a significant skills gap. Without the necessary expertise, companies may struggle to integrate new systems, leading to stalled initiatives. Lack of specific skills and talents has been found to be the biggest obstacle for pharmaceutical companies in their digital transformation journey, according to a survey conducted by GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

In a recent GlobalData’s survey “Digital Transformation and Emerging Technologies in the Healthcare Industry – 2024”, in line with previous years’ results, lack of specific skills and talents was selected as the top hinderance for digital transformation by the 49% of surveyed pharmaceutical industry professionals.

Urte Jakimaviciute, Senior Director of Market Research and Strategic Intelligence at GlobalData, comments: “Shortage of talents that have specific digital skills continues to be a pressing issue for pharmaceutical companies that first experienced digital skills scarcity shortly after the arrival of COVID-19. Despite the growing demand for tech-savvy specialists, there is a limited supply of individuals possessing necessary expertise, and there is no quick solution for this.“

Survey data also showed that large and medium-sized companies see a lack of specific skills and talents as more of a concern than smaller ones.

Jakimaviciute continues: “Larger corporations may have a wider scale of operations or a higher number of systems to digitalize, which requires more human resources to complete the process. As such, the absence of skills may make them unable to fully leverage the technologies that they invest in for digital transformation.”

While the labor market has been heated up by the race for recruiting talents, large enterprises, which demand a higher number of employees and tend to have a more global presence, may struggle more to deal with tech-savvy workforce constraints. On the other hand, small companies may prioritize rapid innovation over very specialized roles and also often outsource more to access very specialized skills.

Jakimaviciute concludes: “The ongoing advancements in technologies also mean that skills can become easily outdated, making it critical for companies to continuously invest in talent acquisition and upskilling.”

* GlobalData’s survey fielded with 109 pharmaceutical industry professionals from August 15, 2024, to October 11, 2024.

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