Companies are retooling for the technology era: changing how they work, sell, service and deliver. As the world gets smaller with greater global competition, business cycles are shorter and organizations are forced to be more agile. Cyber hacking and disruptive technologies pose new risks, but companies are also pioneering new ways of working that reshape how business is done. As head of technology at Manpower Group, a global workforce solutions company with over 400,000 clients across 80 countries, I see these changes up close. Companies are thinking differently about everything from managing employee engagement to client relationships. As a result, the role of IT leaders within companies is evolving. Businesses need greater flexibility to catch market shifts as they happen and dodge competition. This new world of work is still taking shape, but we can spot the trends on the horizon.

Companies are More Interconnected and Specialized

Clients, like everyone else, are exposed to rapid changes in how products are conceived and delivered. To adapt, they are increasingly leveraging technology and partnerships that give them the capacity and flexibility to respond quickly. They expect service providers to be aggressive users of technology and be able to rapidly scale up, while maintaining quality and managing costs.

This is particularly true when it comes to workforce management. Given how quickly companies' IT needs are evolving, many struggle to hire enough people with the right skills and experience. Instead, they look for partners to bring in specialist skills and technologies, and keep their in-house IT departments smaller and more agile. We have seen this in our own business as we use partners to engineer the shift to cloud computing, move to mobile and usage of better analytics. Through such strategic partnerships, companies get best-in-class IT capabilities at lower costs. The trick is learning to integrate and effectively manage these new vendor relationships.

In all likelihood, IT budgets will remain relatively flat in the coming years, fueled by the ever-decreasing costs of computing and automation. Corporations will continue to expect more for less, and customers will want more sophisticated solutions. That will put greater pressure on CIOs, and makes it all the more important to choose reliable, proven partners.