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.
5. 6%
9%
13%
13%
13%
14%
16%
30%
31%
35%
43%
42%
38%
48%
43%
41%
39%
53%
51%
44%
Lack of support - peers
Too much tech change
Unreliable suppliers
Lack of the right external skills
Lack of support - board
Business not ‘bought into’ IT
Current structure of IT team
Lack of the right internal skills
Changing business priorities
Availability of budgets
Great
Some
To what extent have these factors stopped you from achieving your tech vision?
Source: Harvey Nash CIO Survey 2013
Barriers to achieving vision
Hinweis der Redaktion
Total US respondents: 305East Coast (NJ, NY, PA, MA, MD, CT) respondents: 102 (33% of US respondents)Midwest (IL, WI, MO) respondents: 55 (17% of US respondents)West Coast (CA, CO, WA) respondents: 108 (35% of US respondents)
One measure of the health of an IT department is how the budgets are growing. It has been something we have been tracking for over 15 years; in fact two recessions (and recoveries) worth of data.The good news this graph depicts is that spending growth is now back at pre-recession levels. But that news comes with a little twist; the growth in technology spend has levelled out. Only time will tell where the graph leads to next year, but your own predictions (as shown in red here) suggest the trend is downward.Whilst graphics like these are excellent are showing the progress of technology from a numbers perspective, this year we also looked at how the CIO him or herself has changed since the beginning of the recession. It paints a fascinating picture
This budget pressure became particularly apparent when we looked at what kind of factors were getting in the way of CIOs achieving their technology vision; over one third were saying its effect was very significant and almost 8 in 10 were affected in at least some way by lack of budgets.Another big factor that the recession has brought is changing business models and priorities, something that affects 8 out of 10 CIOs.Perhaps more surprising is the third major barrier: lack of internal skills – in fact if you add Great and Some together it’s the single most widespread barrier. It suggests that business and IT have changed in recent years, and that there is a growing mismatch between what the internal team are geared up to deliver, and what is being expected of them.One other thing to draw out from this chart is that although only 1 in 8 CIOs see their relationship with the board as a MAJOR barrier, over half (56%) see that their vision would be helped by a better relationship with the board. More about that later.
