Organizations are realizing the importance of skilled employees. They say the lack of digital skills even hinders their digital transformation.

A new study by cloud firm Enoso shows that 65% of corporate leaders feel their organizations aren’t ready for the digital age. The main issue? They lack skilled enough workers in several IT areas, mostly artificial intelligence, data science and/or infrastructure management. They also feel they lack the ability to manage new IT models that would come into focus with digital transformation.

Also, only 47% of organizations say they want to implement digital transformation strategies. This points that the difference in the two percentages show some organizations stop their digital transformation because of lack of skilled talent.

Enoso adds that there’s a 6% year-on-year increase in companies which feel digital transformation is important. Often though, the companies face unexpected challenges, the most common being the lack of skills. This reflects on the IT job market, too. Job offers in areas like data science net a 30% increase in the UK alone. Cyber security specialists, developers and infrastructure pros also can enjoy a rising pool of new opportunities.

The problem is, that even with the job offers, many candidates come that don’t have the needed qualifications and/or skills. Part of this is a result of the focus on the wrong skills, but mostly because there are simply not enough workers. This is why 41% of companies say they resort to working with suppliers and around a third work with consultants to help offset the skills gaps. Those are mostly temporary solutions though, as most companies need full-time pros and it’s actually cheaper and more effective with your own team.

Also, 40% of companies say their main challenge this year is keeping pace with technology changes. Among the top categories for spending are cloud, infrastructure and agile transformation.

All of this also leads to other changes. Some 60% of organizations say they are rethinking their business models, too. They are shifted to account for new technologies like AI, analytics and APIs. Also, 80% of organizations say the main driver for digital transformation is their customer expectations.