The traditional image of the tech geek is fading as organizations increasingly need people with both technology and business savvy. And Canadian business schools are beginning to offer new programs that marry the two skills.
Ryerson is the only Canadian university currently offering the new BTM undergraduate degree, which was designed by the Canadian Coalition for Tomorrow’s ICT Skills (CCICT) with the aim of improving the quality and number of business professionals in the understaffed ICT-related workforce.
But, according to coalition executive director David Ticoll, up to a dozen other universities have approved or are in the process of approving the program, with target start dates of fall 2011 or 2012.
“The nature of demand for ICT-related skills is changing,” notes a CCICT consultation paper submitted to the federal government in July, entitled Improving Canada’s Digital Advantage. “Numerous ICT professionals are unemployed because their skills do not match the needs of today’s labour market. ICT is decreasingly about traditional desk-bound programming and increasingly about 21st-century careers for professionals who display leadership and drive innovation.”
In fact, students like Andrew Young, who graduates this spring with a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Business Technology Management (BTM) from Toronto’s Ryerson University, are already getting job offers from employers hungering for workers with this hybrid skill set.
“I have known since I was in Grade 11 that I wanted to go to Ryerson, and take this program specifically, because I love computers and I love business,” says Mr. Young, who is among a total of about 1,500 students enrolled in the five-year program.
A typical BTM degree program includes courses ranging from financial accounting, and system analysis and design, to IT infrastructure and marketing, global management, written communication, and organizational behaviour and interpersonal skills. Students must complete 20 months of work experience in the co-op part of the program, which will prepare them for typical business technology manager roles – such as business analyst, project and program managers, technology consultants, entrepreneurs, and technical sales/marketing.
In Canada, there are about a million workers in ICT-type jobs, which have grown about 10 per cent annually in the past decade, but most post-secondary programs have experienced chronic under-enrolments and employers are struggling to fill positions, Mr. Ticoll says from his Toronto office.
“There’s a general perception out there that if you’re going to do an information technology-related career, you’ll be a geek, spend all your time in technology and doing system maintenance, and having your face in a computer all day, and not relate to people and do other things,” he says. “There’s a lack of understanding that there’s a business-oriented, technology career option. A lot of people aren’t aware this even exists or the level of demand for it.
“If you go to one of these business schools offering the BTM, you need the level of math that will get you into a commerce program, but not the advanced level you need to get you into a science or technology program.”
Business technology managers are “the renaissance persons of business. They need to be good communicators, to deal with human needs, as well as business, business strategy and technology – you need to use both sides of your brain,” adds Mr. Ticoll. “This is a very different kind of technology career than most people generally think.”
Ayse Bener, director of Ryerson’s BTM program, which evolved from the university’s decade-old Information Technology Management (ITM) program, says that traditionally, “companies have workers who are either business oriented with no clue about technology, or who are technologically oriented who don’t understand business.
