44% Of CIOs Struggle With High IT Spend

Although a majority of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) would rather be working on projects that help their companies innovate (43%), 44% of CIOs spend most of their time managing IT spend to meet day-to-day needs, according to a study from Constellation Research.

The fourth annual Constellation Next-Gen CIO Survey outlines interviews with 119 respondents based on their IT priorities and overall personas.

Several factors are prohibiting CIOs from bringing innovation into their IT capabilities. Up to 80% of IT budgets are spent on outdated legacy systems, which CIOs considered the greatest challenge they face.

But of all potential investments, enabling IT employees with mobile technology (65%), leveraging analytics and Big Data (60%) and transitioning to the cloud (51%) were considered top priorities for all CIOs.

Constellation Research developed four CIO personas based on how IT strategies are being implemented and managed, including:

Chief Integration Officer: These CIOs prioritize scaling external systems that will help the company connect with customers, partners, suppliers, new employees and other external data sources. Their preferred method of scaling external systems include managing integration libraries (54%), ensuring master data management (51%) and identifying systems that can be retired and replaced (42%).

Chief Infrastructure Officer: CIOs with an “infrastructure” persona want to implement disruptive technologies and contracts in order to save the company money on IT costs. Primarily, these CIOs make researching — and deploying — cloud-based solutions a top priority (63%). Renegotiating contracts (37%) and initiating virtualization (35%) are other priorities.

Chief Intelligence Officer: CIOs who prioritize the “intelligence” category aim to bring the right information to the right person at the right time, with the right security and format. Primarily, CIOs who fall under this persona invest in data standards and accessibility throughout the organization. While enabling mobile access for employees (59%) remains a top priority compared to last year (58%), improving data quality (47%) and implementing self-service (42%) are gaining momentum.

Chief Innovation Officer: CIOs who focus on innovation have deep knowledge and passion for the business domain and the ability to simplify the communication of technology and its impact on the business. Mobilizing the enterprise is most important (54%), while training IT leaders to address business goals (46%) and exploring cloud-based solutions (40%) also are top priorities.

Click here to access a complete version of the survey.