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Follow UsNew Delhi: IBM unveiled the findings of its global study of more than 2,500 Chief Information Officers (CIOs), including those from India. According to the India Point of View (PoV) of this study, Indian CIOs appear to be more progressive as compared to their global counterparts. The India PoV reveals that Indian CIOs are looking to 'make innovation real' and 'expand business impact' for their respective organizations.
In this study, which is among the most comprehensive face-to-face survey done with CIOs across 78 countries and 19 industries, 100 Indian CIOs from organizations of all sizes were interviewed. The PoV finds that across majority of survey questions, responses of Indian CIOs appeared to indicate that they are more progressive and visionary as compared to their global counterparts.
Key findings:
· 70 percent of Indian CIOs are integrating business and technology to promote innovation for the entire organization as compared to 47 percent of global CIOs.
· 64 percent Indian CIOs proactively push IT as an innovation element compared to 55 percent of global CIOs.
· 64 percent of Indian CIOs anticipate standardized and low-cost business processes to be a reality within their organization. Repeatability and simplicity seem to be more important than the unique character of the process itself. Only 53 percent global CIOs share this view.
· Three-fourth (76 percent) of both global as well as Indian CIOs foresee a strongly centralized infrastructure over the next five years.
· Over 70 percent Indian CIOs expect to explore newer channels for end-customer interactions, and anticipate greater levels of integration and transparency with customers in the next five years. Global responses rank between 56-64 percent.
· One key area where global CIOs rank ahead of Indian CIOs is around proactively crafting data into actionable information. However, this is also an area which both global and Indian CIOs have ranked as #1 for their visionary plans for future.
· 56 percent of Indian CIOs decide on business strategy as a member of the senior management team. Globally, this number is only 33 percent.
· The starkest contrast between what global CIOs and Indian CIOs pointed out among their top most challenges for future was 'budgets'. 45 percent of global CIOs saw this as a challenge vs only 28 percent of Indian CIOs. Clearly, IT budgets aren't something that is bothering Indian CIOs as much as their global peers.
The CIO Study 2009 found that successful CIOs integrate three pairs of roles. Though these dual roles seem contradictory, they are really complementary.
At any given time, a successful CIO is focused on:
Making innovation real as both an insightful visionary and an able pragmatist
Raising the RoI of IT as both a savvy value creator and a relentless cost cutter
Expanding business impact as both a collaborative business leader and an inspiring IT manager
However, in case of Indian CIOs, 'making innovation real' and 'expanding business impact' stood out as most relevant roles. Raising RoI of IT is considered to be a 'business as usual' role that the CIOs are expected to perform.
Top three priority areas for future:
Business intelligence & analytics
Risk mitigation & governance
Virtualization
Indian CIOs also gave significantly higher ranking to areas like green IT as compared to global peers. Concepts such as SOA/Web services and business process management, fairly new concepts within the last five years for most CIOs, have obtained a firm position in the top innovation list in this study.
Key challenges for future:
Business model change
Technological factors
Security factors
Due to increasing adoption of online business, the traditional way of doing business is undergoing sea change in India. Online business brings with it risk related to data security and keeping pace with tech advancements. And this gets represented in the survey, where security factors rank high as the challenge.