CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--IT departments saw greater-than-expected growth this year, paced by increases in budgets and salaries according to the 2013 Society for Information Management IT Trends Survey, SIM’s annual poll of IT professionals. Survey results were released at SIM’s premier event, SIMposium 2013: The Boston IT Party 2.0 today in Boston.
The 34th Annual SIM IT Trends Survey compiled answers from nearly 600 senior IT leaders. It is a recognized industry benchmark for senior IT management in areas which include IT spending patterns, how CIOs spend their time and to whom they report, IT workforce trends, and other important aspects of IT management. Responding organizations average $4.36 billion in revenues and employ an average of 8,629 employees. Forty-nine percent of the respondents came from financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, education or government sectors, with the largest percent (14percent) coming from financial services.
Among this year’s notable findings, the trend in IT budgets is up more than anticipated with 61 percent responding that budgets increased, 12 percent responding that budgets remained flat, and only 27 percent of organizations reporting that budgets actually decreased – less than half of the anticipated number flat or decreasing.
“This year’s survey has had the highest response rate ever in the 34-year history of the SIM IT Trends study,” said Leon Kappelman, lead researcher, Professor of Information Systems, and Director Emeritus of the Information Systems Research Center for the College of Business at the University of North Texas. “Nearly 600 senior IT leaders from 484 unique organizations answered the questionnaire, including 285 CIOs. This has helped give us our most complete picture ever of the trends taking place in IT departments and allowed us to draw some interesting conclusions.”
Each year, senior IT managers rank their largest IT management concerns and issues that they face. A new twist added in 2013, asked both their personal and organization’s greatest concerns. The chart below illustrates the top five personal concerns of IT leaders as compared to those of their organizations. It reveals a general misalignment in priorities between IT leaders and other C-suite executives
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Most |
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Important/Worrisome |
Most Important to |
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to IT Leaders |
the Organization |
Management Issue |
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| 1 | 1 | Alignment of IT with the Business | ||
| 2 | 7 | Security | ||
| 3 | 16 | IT Talent / Skill Shortage | ||
| 4 | 14 | Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery | ||
| 5 | 11 | Prioritization Process for IT Projects |
Only five of the senior IT leaders’ most important IT management concerns appear in the top 10 list of their organizations’ concerns. Only Alignment of IT with the Business appears in the top five of both lists, rated as number one on both. However, only 30.2 percent of senior IT leaders selected it as one of their top three personal concern versus 43.7 percent selecting it as an organizational one. The remaining top five personal concerns are more tactical and operational; with a very clear IT, rather than a business, focus. “But is it a misalignment, or perhaps an understandable and appropriate divergence in focus?” asks Kappelman.
Along those same lines, senior IT managers were asked what technologies were “keeping them up at night.” Intriguingly, their personal rankings also diverged from what they cited as their organization’s five largest IT investments in 2013, which are:
1. Analytics / Business Intelligence
2. Customer Relationship Management
3. Cloud Computing (e.g., SaaS, PaaS, IaaS)
4. Enterprise Resource Planning
5. Big Data
Interestingly, in 2012 when respondents were asked about anticipated 2013 budgetary changes, 54.2 percent responded that the budgets would remain flat or decrease and only 45.8 percent of the organizations anticipated an increase in IT spending. However, according to the 2013 SIM Survey, the trend in IT budgets is up more than anticipated with 61 percent responding that budgets increased, 12 percent responding that budgets remained flat, and only 27 percent of organizations reporting that budgets actually decreased – less than half of the anticipated number flat or decreasing.
You can view the complete summary of Kappelman’s team’s work here: http://bit.ly/1asjfDN
About The Society for Information Management (SIM)
Established in 1968, the Society for Information Management (SIM) is the premier network for IT leaders composed of nearly 5,000 members including CIOs, senior IT executives, prominent academicians, consultants, and other IT leaders. SIM is a community of thought leaders who share experiences and apply rich intellectual capital, and who explore future IT direction. Through its 31 chapters, SIM provides resources and programs inspired by IT leaders for IT leaders that enable CIOs to further develop the leadership capabilities of themselves and the key and emerging leaders in their organizations. SIM provides the collective voice to advocate policy and legislation on behalf of the IT profession across industries.