Home > English, maths and digital skills > Digital skills > Why are digital skills so important?
Nearly everything we do these days involves a level of digital skill. Furthermore, this is only going to become more prevalent as technology continues to advance, integrate with our lives and be part and parcel of our everyday work lives.
What types of digital technologies are used by employers?
Spreadsheets, writers and powerpoints are so widely used that skills utilising these tools are transferrable into almost any workplace. By far, Microsoft Office is the most commonly used software available.
Alongside office software, messaging has become so popular that virtually every employer uses it. Emailing has practically replaced hand written letters in many applications, and calendar has eliminated the need for paper diaries altogether.
EPOS is used widely in retail to handle the sales of goods and services to a customer. Point of sale technology also handles credit card purchases and monitoring intake of cash payments. EPOS usually requires a lot of additional peripherals such as a Card Reader, Cash Drawer and Receipt Printer. Some EPOS systems have special integrations for processing Royal Mail labels for parcel returns and selling National Lottery tickets.
Firms that focus on target-driven sales or services such as recruitment and IT services will have a CRM system for maintaining their relationships with customers, tracking new "Leads" (potential customers) and any "Cases" (issues arising) with existing customers. CRMs also provide performance reports.
Warehouses, stock rooms and production-related industries such as manufacturing require systems that can manage their inventory, tracking how much of a given item is stored and where. In addition to on-screen software, inventory management utilises a lot of handheld devices such as barcode readers and voice-pick headsets.
MIS systems provide useful data reports and metrics that help with strategic business planning, providing managers with timely reports to help the decision making process. MIS systems don't work alone, rather they integrate with other systems which capture the initial information they can then work from.
HRMS systems allow organisations to more effectively manage their staff, such as storing employee data and managing payroll. Failure of HRMS could be catastrophic, causing employees to not be paid, so its uptime is essential. In environments where employees have varied shifts and are paid hourly, HRMS may also manage the clocking in-out of employees and organising their rotas.
Accounting software tracks financial transactions and exchanges. As well as transferring funds between accounts, software also tracks internal requisitions, procurement and purchases so that every single purchase has an evidencable receipt. Accounting software may also integrate with HRMS and EPOS software to handle payroll and incoming cash.
CAD software is used to design anything and everything. It can be used to design components to be produced in manufacturing, or the planning an. design of buildings. Some CAD software can also integrate with manufacturing software for robotic arms to automatically produce some components.
