State of the CIO 2013
CIO’s annual “State of the CIO” survey is conducted with the objective of understanding how the role of the CIO continues to evolve in today’s business climate and to help define the CIO agenda for 2013. This definitive benchmarking survey, now in its 12th year, measures the role of the CIO in the organization, budgetary responsibilities, business and leadership challenges, and the key skills needed for the job today. Although respondents show limited confidence in the economic outlook of the United States over the next twelve months, more than one third of them see their organization’s prospects in emerging prospects (e.g., China, Brazil, Russia) as excellent or good during the next 12 months.
Key findings include:
- Alignment continues to be the most frequently cited activity consuming CIOs time. Two thirds (63%) of respondents say the majority of their time and focus is spent aligning IT initiatives with business goals followed by improvements to IT operations and systems performance (54 percent), implementing new systems and architecture (50 percent), cultivating partnerships between IT and business (45 percent), and cost control and expense management (40 percent).
- CIOs want to spend almost three times more time on developing new go-to market strategies/technologies than they currently do. As well as study market trends for commercial opportunities.
- More than half (53%) of the respondents are responsible for one or more non-IT area of the business – including operations (18%), customer service (14%) and risk management (13%).
- CIOs predict that cloud, technology-as-a-service (36%), will have the most profound effect on their role, followed by mobile (31%). Consumerization (15%), Big Data (12%) and Social Media (6%) seem to not have the same effect.
- CIO’s opinion on the economic outlook of the United States over the next 12 months is only fair, but over one third (38%) see their organization’s prospects in emerging prospects (e.g., China, Brazil, Russia) as excellent or good during the next 12 months.
- Fewer CIOs this year say their company’s business stakeholders perceive their IT organization as a cost center lacking enterprise value (15 percent, versus 21 percent), while a higher percentage are viewed as business peers engaged in developing, not just enabling, business strategy (20 percent, versus 15 percent last year).
The 2013 State of the CIO was conducted online among CIO’s audience in September 2012. Results are based on 563 respondents who indicated they are the head of IT at their company or business unit.
For more information on this study, view the excerpt below. To receive the complete study results contact Bob Melk.