Confidence among IT directors that their firms' business
processes and IT systems are well-integrated has shown tentative
signs of slipping in recent months, and IT chiefs also appear to be
losing confidence that their core systems are robust and scalable
enough to cope with future challenges.
When surveyed last month, 61% of UK IT directors said their
companies' business processes integrated well with their IT systems
- 10 percentage points lower than when the same statement was put
to them in April.
The findings come from Computer Weekly's CIO Index, which tracks
UK industry trends through a quarterly survey of top IT
management.
The sense of growing anxiety among IT chiefs around IT-business
alignment was highlighted by a drop in the proportion of IT chiefs
who agreed that managing change was getting easier - 55% agreed
this time, against 61% in April.
Concerns about data quality contributed to a sense of worsening
relations between end-users and the IT department. This time
around, 61% of IT directors said the quality of data provided by
users was getting better, against 66% in the April poll.
However, in several other key areas IT directors appear more
confident than they were earlier in the year. In the latest survey,
50% of IT chiefs said data and network security was not adequately
funded - an improvement of 16 percentage points on April, when 66%
said security funding came up short.
The figures suggest that, although security remains an area of
fundamental concern, things are moving in the right direction.
Confidence that outsourcing is providing the expected benefits
has also registered a small improvement - 30% said it was meeting
expectations, against 25% in April - but most IT directors are
still far from convinced about outsourcing's advantages and seem
generally happier keeping the IT function in-house where
possible.
The survey suggests that compliance with regulations may be
getting more manageable. Seventy per cent of IT leaders said that
regulatory compliance was under control, up from 66%, though that
still leaves 30% of IT heads who feel they are failing to cope with
the compliance burden.
Several other findings from July's survey matched closely those
of our April survey.
Recruitment remains a notable issue. Nearly 33% of IT leaders
said they were unable to get staff with the necessary skills.
Another bugbear lies in maintaining adequate lines of
communication between the IT department and end-users. Forty per
cent of IT leaders still believe that their end-users are not
sufficiently trained to use systems effectively, and a similar
proportion said that end-users did not advise staff regularly on
their changing requirements.
However, despite the limitations and challenges faced, 98% of IT
directors are still secure in the belief that they deliver a
reliable service overall. And 90% remain positive that
communications between IT and the business are improving.
An even greater proportion are confident that IT is continuing
to improve its overall performance in the business. The CIO Index
found that 92% of IT directors saw IT as providing more
demonstrable business value than a year ago, and 96% said that than
value would be even more evident a year from now.
Ninety per cent of respondents believe that IT management is
getting on a more professional footing. The finding suggests that
the IT professionalism initiatives headed by the British Computer
Society and the National Computing Centre have caught the mood of
IT directors.
Methodology
In July, Computer Weekly conducted the second of its online
surveys of IT directors in the Computer Weekly 500 Club. The
research was carried out by our parent company Reed Business
Information's market research department, strictly adhering to the
Market Research Society's code of conduct.
Respondents graded their replies to a statement according to
four categories: agree strongly, agree slightly, disagree slightly
and disagree strongly.
Computer Weekly's CIO Index will be carried out quarterly and
will provide analysis of key metrics for IT expenditure, technology
adoption and business readiness.
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