Top 10 CIO Concerns for 2016
November 2, 2015 12:11 PM
What are the most important issues for IT leaders as we head into 2016? The Society for Information Management polled 785 organizations to find out for its 2016 IT Trends Study. Here are the top 10 results.
Alignment of IT with the Business
The SIM study suggests that alignment remains a persistent issue due to the changing nature of business and the difficulty that the IT organization has in responding to these changes. In other words, it is one thing to become aligned, but quite another to stay aligned, the study notes.
Security and Privacy
Security/privacy has been a top 10 issue for CIOs for over a decade in the annual SIM Trends study, moving into the top 5 ranking last year. Nearly one-third (32%) of survey respondents selected security/privacy as a top IT management issue for 2016.
Speed of IT Delivery and Time-to-Market
Little surprise here, since IT is part of just about every business process and product. IT time-to-market can significantly impact an organizations revenue, market share, customer acquisition and retention, employee satisfaction and loyalty, brand image, profit margins, and more, the study stresses.
Innovation
This has been one of the loudest calls to action for CIOs this year. As the study explains, When successfully achieved, innovation has the ability to achieve both revenue growth and cost reduction. In fact, innovation can help with just about all of the IT management issues.
Business Productivity and Efficiency
The study notes that Its relative importance has dropped a bit over the last four years, perhaps as organizations begin concentrating on other issues, or simply that doing more with less. Still, productivity is and will continue to be an important priority for companies.
IT Value Proposition to the Business
This is good news, the study stresses, confirming that IT leaders not only consider themselves to be technology leaders, but also recognize the significant role they play in the achievement of organization goals.
IT Agility and Flexibility
The fact that IT agility ranked in the top 10 among IT leaders reaffirms the desire by many organizations to achieve strategic and organizational IT benefits; while also improving IT operations.
IT Cost Reduction and Controls
SIM survey participants demonstrated a continued focus on strategic and organizational issues in the responses; as well as the goal that IT become more efficient, swift, secure, nimble, and innovative.
Business Agility and Flexibility
This was perhaps the most surprising result in the top 10 not that it made the list, but in how far it dropped. Business agility had been selected as the number two or number three top concern for each of the last six years.
Business Cost Reduction and Controls
Interestingly, this topic was ranked a top 10 concern for the "organization," but not on the list of what respondents said they are "personally" concerned with. This suggests a significant disconnect, the SIM study noted.