Further Reading
An IBM poll of 3,000 CIOs reveals that business analytics, mobility solutions and virtualization are the top three priorities for increasing their enterprise's competitiveness.
A CIO survey reveals that harnessing business intelligence and analytics is by far the CIO's top priority for increasing competitiveness over the next three to five years. IBM surveys have polled the opinions of 13,000 CIOs worldwide over the last six years, revealing in their latest study that business analytics remains the top priority in enhancing the competitiveness of their enterprises.
"CIOs must understand the needs and goals of their organizations, agencies, divisions or business units, and deliver on their unique mandates," said the report. "The biennial IBM Global Chief Information Officer Study, reflects face-to-face conversations with over 3,000 CIOs from organizations of every size, sector and region."
A 76-page summary of the report's findings, entitled "The Essential CIO: Insights from the Global Chief Information Officer Study," is available free as a PDF.
According to the study, the top strategic technology investment CIOs recommend to enhance their enterprises' competitiveness over the next five years is business analytics, followed by mobility solutions and virtualization. Cloud computing, a distant concern for CIOs during the last iteration of the study in 2009, rose to tie for the fourth slot in 2011.
"To increase competitiveness, 83 percent of CIOs have visionary plans that include business intelligence and analytics, followed by mobility solutions (74 percent) and virtualization (68 percent). Since our 2009 Global CIO Study, cloud computing shot up in priority, selected by 45 percent more CIOs than before and leaping into a tie for fourth place with business process management (60 percent each)," said the study.
CIOs worldwide consider business intelligence and analytics the best methods of mining the nuggets of wisdom in their expanding data warehouses.
CEOs, in particular, are increasingly depending on the business intelligence and analytics managed by their CIOs as the best means of turning the raw data about their enterprise's performance into usable information resulting in intelligence CEOs can use to make informed decisions.
CIOs in midsized organizations deemed mobility solutions particularly important, according to a subset study, entitled "The Essential CIO: Midmarket CIO Study 2011."
"Trends such as the explosion of mobile shopping, the proliferation of smart phones, and the drive to better harness data through the social Web to drive results have transformed the way midsize firms do business," said that report.
CIOs with a mandate from their CEOs to expand their operations were more than double the size of any other group identified in the report (except for the financial-markets sector, which were predominantly operating under a "pioneer" mandate).
"Simply put, [expand] is what organizations today are asking for most often from their CIOs," said the report.
Beside business intelligence and analytics, CIOs at midsize enterprises with a mandate to expand identified process and product simplification as the drivers by which they planned to demonstrate fulfillment of their mandate. Nearly all CIOs in this group--98 percent--said they aimed to simplify key internal processes and 92 percent said they would drive better real-time decision making with business intelligence and analytics. Pioneer-mandate CIOs in midsized enterprises identified product/service profitability analysis as their top priority for turning raw data into actionable business intelligence.
