CIOs see significant gaps between IT capabilities and business expectations in areas including innovation and cybersecurity, according to a recent survey by Big Four firm Deloitte.
In the firm’s 2016-2017 Global CIO Survey, 57 percent of CIOs report that their organizations expect them to assist in business innovation and developing new products and services, but more than half said that innovation and disruption priorities currently do not exist or are in the process of being built. Cybersecurity was identified as a core expectation, but only 10 percent of CIOs report cybersecurity and IT risk management are a top business priority. However, 64 percent of CIOs expect tech spending on cybersecurity will increase over the next two years.
About three-quarters of responding CIOs said that aligning IT to business strategy and performance goals is the top IT capability essential to success. Most respondents also chose strategic alignment as the top IT capability essential to their successes, followed by execution of technology projects at 55 percent, and vision and strategy after that (nearly 50 percent).
Other findings included that 82 percent of CIOs predict spending on legacy systems and core modernization will increase or hold steady over the next two years, signaling what Deloitte terms the “enormous” back-end transformation underway to support front-end customer demands.
“Rapidly shifting business priorities mean that CIOs can’t afford to just react to business needs; they need to develop the business acumen to anticipate and pre-empt future business needs,” said Khalid Kark, managing director of Deloitte LLP and director of research for Deloitte’s CIO program, in a statement. “While business leaders are increasingly focused on the ‘front’ end of digital – customer engagement – it is extremely important for CIOs to look beyond the customer to drive business value. Of course they need to connect a plethora of back-end legacy systems, processes and data with front-end customer-facing tools – but they also have a huge opportunity to harness emerging technologies. We are already starting to see technologies like cognitive computing, Internet of Things and additive manufacturing reshaping existing business models and creating new businesses opportunities and markets.”
