More than one in five CIOs believe that their direct control over technology has diminished since the start of the recession, whilst the proportion of companies where more than ten per cent of technology spend lies outside the control of the IT department has almost doubled to 40 per cent in the last three years.
Despite this, CIOs see their roles as growing in importance, but recognise that their value is increasingly driven through collaboration and influence, rather than direct control.
This is according to the 15th Annual CIO Technology Survey 2013, conducted by Harvey Nash in association with TelecityGroup, presenting the views of more than 2,000 CIOs and technology leaders across twenty countries.
2. Disruption
Percentage of U.S. CIOs who view disruptive technologies positively with a view to invest in the coming year
Source: Harvey Nash CIO Survey 2013
3. Disruptors
To what extent have mobile / cloud been implemented?
Source: Harvey Nash CIO Survey 2013
Mobile Cloud
12. Innovation
Gap
75% see ‘great’ innovation
potential for their company
…but only 3% felt
innovation had been fully
achieved.
Notas do Editor
One area of big innovation and transformation in IT has been around disruption, and this year we looked into this in more detail.U.S. CIOs believe that Cloud and Mobility solutions have big potential for generating positive advantage for their organization. Theyalso believe these disruptors have little “downside” so it’s not surprising that they dominate investment plans by U.S. CIOs in disruptive technologies over the next year.46 percent of CIOs plan to invest in Collaborations, while Social media is a priority for 41 percent and Big data a priority for 37 percent of CIOs. For a smaller proportion of U.S. CIOs, only 8 percent, will invest in Shadow IT but BYOD investment will continue to grow over the next year for about a third of CIOs.
Despite how positive CIOs feel about Mobile and Cloud what is very clear is that few CIOs have achieved anywhere close to what they believe is the real potential in these areas. Three quarters of CIOs have yet to do anything serious with Mobile, and almost half – 46 percent – have done little innovation with Cloud. When we look at regional results related to Cloud, the west coast is on par with the US, while the midwest is doing even less at 52%.When we open the webinar up to Q&A I'd love to hear from some of you about what you are doing in the area of Mobile and Cloud and what challenges or opportunities you are experiencing.
Ownership and collaboration remain important themes when exploring developments in digital and disruptive technologies. Only 12 percent of U.S. CIOs have full “ownership” of digital technology in their organization. For 34 percent of U.S. CIOs the marketing team has full ownership, but for the greater proportion (43 percent) there is a degree of shared ownership.
CIOs have more strategic influence than ever, but more than half -57 percent - believe they lack support from the board to realize their technology vision. There are a number of ways to respond to this, but thumping the boardroom table and demanding more control of strategy development that shapes IT deliverables is not to way to achieve it, as we shall now see…
The CIO is increasingly no longer the only executive around the board room table responsible for the procuring and management of technology. As more businesses put technology at the heart of their growth strategy it has become more important than ever for CIOs to use their influencing skills, and their ability to educate their C-level peers, on the importance of enabling the technology innovators to put their skills to work and turn the technology vision into real business success.The CIO of the future will be increasingly required to influence the business rather than merely controlling systems and hardware, their value will not be judged by the value of his or her IT estate, it will be by their relationships.
Another aspect of influence is who you are influencing. Although almost two thirds of CEOs favor technology projects that 'make' rather than 'save' money, the CIO collaborates least well with the Marketing and Sales function, compared to the Operations and Finance departments.Incidentally, when we looked CEOs favor for projects that ‘make’ versus ‘save money’, 72% of Midwest CEOs prefer projects that ‘make money compared to 61% of east coast respondents.
Placeholder for poll question
U.S. CIOs remain confident of the potential for technology innovation to enhance competitive advantage. Seventy-five percent of respondents believe there is great innovation potential in their industry,up two percent on 2012 figures. However, there is a growing gap between the innovation potential and innovation reality for many U.S. organizations. Only three percent of U.S. CIOs believe the innovation potential in their organization has been fully realized, and less than one-quarter feel it has been mostly realized. When we look at the data regionally, West coast respondents are fairing best with 39% indicating their technology innovation potential has been fully or mostly achieved. The greatest gap appears to be in the Midwest with 0% of respondents indicating they have full achieved their technology innovation potential and only 17% saying it was mostly achieved.For the majority - 69 percent - innovation potential has only been “partly” achieved and, for four percent of U.S. CIOs, it has not been achieved at all.