Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

Blog: The Business-IT Expectation Gap is There and it Matters

Business functional view of the importance of technology is not synonymous with IT's ability to provide it.

Had a chance recently to examine Forrester's July 2008 survey of 600 business executives and how they perceived IT's role in their organizations, both in terms of importance of technology and how well IT support that technology requirement. The survey (which will be published in the near future on www.forrester.com) also reported the responder results by primary business organizations -- executive, sales, customer service, marketing, product development, manufacturing/supply chain, and finance/HR. A few highlights:

Technology-dependency does not imply that all of it originates with IT. Eighty-two percent of responders agree that technology is core to their business, but only 71 percent see IT's role as effective. In the context of its importance to business functions, product development, not surprisingly, place the highest level of importance and are the least satisfied.

Not necessarily integral to enterprise competitiveness. For those that may think the role of IT has become more strategic to enterprise competitiveness, think again. Seventy-two of responders see technology as central to this goal, but 61 percent see IT as effective. But product development, marketing, supply chain and executives are least satisfied in comparison to technology’s relative importance to their roles.

Sales and distribution depend on tech, but don't count on IT. Seventy-seven percent view it as mandatory for sales and distribution, but only 67 percent see IT as effectively supporting them, with the gap between importance and effectiveness demonstrated by most business functions.

Supporting business drivers — a wide gap. When asked to assess the importance of business drivers and compare how well IT is at supporting them, the gap widens. The only category where IT support quality approached importance of the business driver was in improving end-user workforce productivity — 78 percent viewed this as a somewhat or critically important business driver, but only 60 percent viewed IT as supporting this need very well or excellently.

Of course, your mileage may vary and these are probably not issues in your firm. But if they could be, it's time for you to first measure perception and then diagnose your own gaps and mitigating tactics.

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Coverage
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Tags: cio, impact on business
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • Government Communications 2.0
    The problem with data is that it’s only useful if you share and use it. Equally, the more data we share electronically, the greater the risk of it falling into the wrong hands. Public sector organisations can’t function without legitimately gathering and using personal information about the citizens they are mandated to serve. Technology has made a significant contribution to that process, but has also brought new risks. Read on.
    Learn more »
  • Consolidated Storage for Virtualised Server Environments
    This research brief is based on a recent Tech Target survey with more than 200 storage administrators and IT professionals in mid-sized and enterprise-class companies, and focuses on how these decision-makers view the storage-related challenges that result from server virtualisation. See the results.
    Learn more »
  • HTML5 and security on the new web
    There are lots of changes happening to the key technologies that power the web. The new version of HTML, the dominant web language, offers impressive enhancements for rich web applications. But as HTML5 comes into greater use we’ll see new security issues arise. It’s typical for a new technology to have defects and pitfalls. And although the standard is still being defined, it's already being implemented. So how does HTML5 stand up to security scrutiny?
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.