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IT Concerns 2005: Part 2nd
Last month we carried the results of a survey-the top IT concerns in the minds of CIOs. It was conducted amongst 57 very senior IT managers of large companies-the opinion leaders amongst CIOs. This time we extended the survey to 105 respondents to include a broader base of IT managers. And what emerged is that the concerns of the opinion leaders and those of the rest are not entirely the same
Anil Chopra
Monday, January 03, 2005
Our survey amongst the broader base of IT managers reveals several key findings, one of which is the way IT managers handle their key challenges. For instance, surprisingly a large chunk of them said that they outsourced their deployment of all new products and applications. So outsourcing isn't just happening to India from other countries, but within India as well. Does this mean that these companies lacked the skilled manpower for the job? Another lot of respondents even considered ERP to be the panacea for their technology related woes. It would be interesting to know about their IT budgets.
Who were the respondents?
Out of the 105 respondents, 80 percent were from manufacturing, BFSI, government and other service industries. The
remaining 20 percent were from healthcare, pharma, infrastructure, BPO and academics.
We got some useful insights into the relationship between IT budgets and company turnovers. Companies with less than Rs 100 crore turnover mostly had an IT budget of under a crore of rupees. A majority of companies with Rs 100-500 crore turnover also had under a crore of rupees of IT budget, but a significant lot also had a budget between Rs 1-10 crore. Companies with more than Rs 500 crore turnover were the most surprising. Here, high turnover didn't necessarily mean high IT budgets, so only 37 percent had IT budgets of more than Rs 10 crore, 34 percent had between Rs 1 to 10 crore, while 29 percent even had under Rs 1 crore IT budget. So, a big company doesn't necessarily mean big IT budget.
Another interesting fact about the respondents in this survey is that 44 percent of them had more than 15 years of experience, meaning they were seasoned professionals in their field. Thirty five percent of the lot had 10 to 15 years of experience, while only five percent had less than five years' experience. Moreover, 88 percent of them were working at senior management or mid-management levels in their respective organizations.
Having said that, let's look at the responses from the IT heads on various issues.
Most time-consuming concerns
Our opinion-leaders' survey revealed that their most time-consuming concern was handling vendor and service provider issues. But, this time round the top concern is handling product/technology related issues. Managing vendors and service providers is the next major challenge. And while business and people-related concerns continued to remain the third priority for most IT managers. Moreover, the gap between the third and first two concerns is also quite high.
Most of the respondents who rated product/technologies as their major concern were from the manufacturing, government and other services segments. Out of those who rated vendor and service-provider issues as their top concern, the majority was from manufacturing, the government and IT companies. It seems that business/people issues are largely the concern of IT managers working in very large companies with more than Rs 500 crore turnover, while product/technology related issues are priority for IT managers in companies with less than Rs 100 crore turnover. Perhaps that's why most IT managers who rated product/technology related issues as their third priority were from large companies with turnovers of more than Rs 500 crore.
Interestingly, out of those who rated business/people issues as their top priority, most were from large companies having more than Rs 500 crore turnover, and even those who rated it as their number two issue were also from such large companies. So it seems that CIOs of larger organizations have reached a level where they must align their IT infrastructure with the business.
Handling product, technology, vendors and service providers is no longer top priority for them. This gels with a similar international trend. CIOs of smaller companies with less then Rs 100 crore turnover still seem to be toiling with vendor and service-provider issues.
Anil Chopra
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