Top Corporate Execs Believe IT Is Spending Too Little, Reports Managed Objects
Tuesday, 28 March 2006
In an about face as compared to recent IT spending attitudes, top corporate executives believe their company is spending too little in 2006 on technology, according to results from a survey of more 230 US senior corporate executives and IT managers released yesterday by Managed Objects, the Business Service Management Company.
Survey results showed 46 percent of senior executive respondents (C-suite) said their organization is spending “too little on IT in 2006,” as compared to 10 percent saying too much was being spent, and 44 percent stating spend was “about right.”
In stark contrast to the C-suite’s view of technology spending, 53 percent of IT directors and technology managers feel that IT cost controls are insufficient and need improvement.
“The survey suggests several important trends – first, that senior executives may not be as tight-fisted when it comes to IT as their reputations suggest and that they see the value of technology as a means of propelling their business forward,” said Managed Objects’ CEO Siki Giunta.
“Another indicator here, and it’s not necessarily a disconnect between the C-suite and the IT team, is that the people in the IT trenches can clearly see that there are opportunities for process improvement and are they are more likely to look to best practice models to reduce costs,” Giunta added.
Of the 19 percent of technology directors and managers who reported they believe their organizations would spend too much on IT in 2006, 57 percent of those respondents said they are planning implementation of best practice models such as ITIL among their top actions to better control costs.
While senior executives who thought their IT departments were overspending agreed that best practice implementation was the top priority, they were nearly twice as likely as IT managers to look toward reductions and reallocations in headcount as a primary cost control measure.
Similarly, IT managers believed that reducing the cost of IT downtime was the most important factor to their organizations’ bottom line while senior business executives pointed toward reductions in manpower cost as having the most impact.