Influential IT management trends: an international study

Abstract

This paper is based on data collected as part of an 11-year authors’ survey research on IT trends in different geographic regions, including North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, and Latin America. This study focuses on global similarities and differences in technology trends (e.g., management concerns, influential technologies, budgets/spending, organizational considerations) among geographies to gain insight into the challenges that IT and non-IT executives face today as well as provide an understanding of the impact these technologies have on the organization’s long-term plans and investments. The results for the 11-year period show that the top five management concerns are: (i) IT-business alignment; (ii) business agility; (iii) business cost reduction/controls; (iv) business productivity; and (v) security/privacy. The five most influential technologies are: (i) analytics/business intelligence; (ii) cloud computing; (iii) ERP systems; (iv) CRM systems; and (v) security technologies. Taken together, these findings suggest that the alignment of IT and the business and leveraging IT to reduce business expenses and generate revenue are and will remain essential. The results also suggest that the role of the CIO is evolving and offshore outsourcing is on the rise. Budgets, hiring, and salaries are also increasing, albeit cautiously. This research provides important implications for IT managers to benchmark considerations such as organizational, sourcing, spending, issues/concerns, and technologies across geographies, and sheds light on a perspective on leveraging important IT trends to make thoughtful decisions about them over the coming years, and address current business challenges.

APPENDIX

Research methodology

This research has evolved from the lead authors coordination of the SIM survey from 1999–2013. It is an empirical investigation that applied the survey method as a way to gather data from organizations around the globe. The survey targeted CIOs or senior IT executives of large and medium-sized organizations to collect firm-level data related to various aspects of the IT organization.

This research examines data from the 11 years of the IT trends survey, which were conducted annually between 2004 and 2014. Beginning in 2008, this survey has been extended from organizations based in North America to organizations located in Europe, Asia, Australia, Latin America, and Africa. A significant strength of this study is in its ability to identify important trends by comparing survey data from previous years.

The same online survey (translated as needed for the respective respondents) was applied across the geographies. The questionnaire has evolved from the lead authors SIM IT trends survey, which has been conducted since 1980. SIM’s surveys before 2000 focused exclusively on the top management concerns. Since then, the survey has been extended to pursue more specific insights regarding key IT issues of the day.

Over the 11-year period covered by this study, IT executives were surveyed to identify the most important managerial concerns and application and technology investments, along with other important IT organization considerations such as role of the CIO, organization structure, budgets, sourcing, staffing and salaries. The top management concerns across the geographies were aggregated over the years (see Table 1) to provide the global top five management concerns and their trends that are elaborated on in the paper. Similarly, the top five applications and technologies were aggregated, with stronger emphasis on the more recent data, to provide a list of the global top five applications and technologies that are also presented and elaborated on in the paper.

In 2014, the final data set for this study consists of responses from 2552 organizations (1175 in North America, 801 in Europe, 226 in Asia, 152 in Australia, 132 in Latin America, and 66 in Africa). The 2014 survey was similar to previous ones in methodology and process. The questions were based on previous surveys, with questions modified based on previous results, and suggestions from respondents and researchers (academic and industry). Additionally, some questions were updated and new questions were added based on: (i) other IT trends surveys; (ii) input from board members of sponsoring organizations; and (iii) the authors’ experience.

Comparisons over 11 time periods

The results are based on data from multiple years of the same survey with slight changes (e.g., new IT developments/management concerns). The quantity of the data is sufficient (n>100) for total researched organizations globally in the 11-year period of this study. From a geographical perspective, the quantity of data is sufficient in the years of research for the geographies North America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. For the geographies Australia and Africa the response has not been above n=100 in all years of research (for Africa, 2014 is the first year of research with n=66).

In the successive years, a simple random sampling has been used in the population of IT related employees at different enterprises. For the data gathering over the years the members of known IT communities have been requested to respond to the survey. For example, the SIM population in North America and the communities of CIOnet within Europe. Although these communities changed over time, these changes are limited. Using simple random sampling comparisons can be made using contingency factors such as geography and industry to identify differences and trends. In publications (Luftman et al., 2009, 2011, 2012) several perspectives with regard to the contingency factors have been published and show that geography and industry create differences in the research results. For example, the industry financial sector invests on average more on IT than the industry manufacturing. These investments create differences within industries can cause differences in the global responses. Over the years, the response per industry is similar using the same communities.

Calculating the rankings

Within the research, several rankings are made (e.g., rankings of IT management concerns, IT investments, internal IT metrics). The ranking calculation is similar for all rankings addressed in this paper.

For the different rankings the respondent were requested to select their top three. On the basis of the responses, weighted counts have been made per item. The highest ranked is the most chosen concern, IT investment, or internal IT metric. Below is an example of questions related to management concerns (partly, from a list of 43 in 2014).

illustration

While the authors recognize that over the years the respondents across the geographies are not the same,hence impacting the academic rigor for this research, the overall data collected and observed trends provide industry and researchers with an important set of trends that can assist in preparing for the future.