Indian CIOs more progressive than global counterparts: IBM study
BS Reporter / New Delhi Nov 22, 2009, 00:24 IST
Indian chief information officers (CIOs) appear to be more progressive as compared with their global counterparts and are looking to ‘make innovation real’ and ‘expand business impact’ for their respective organisations.
A reasearch by IBM, based on a survey of 100 Indian CIOs, found that 70 per cent of Indian CIOs are integrating business and technology to promote innovation for their respective organisations, as compared to 47 per cent of the global CIOs. Almost 64 per cent of Indian CIOs proactively push information technology (IT) as an innovation element compared with 55 per cent of global CIOs.
Also, over 70 per cent of Indian CIOs are expecting to explore newer channels for end-customer interactions and are anticipating greater levels of integration and transparency with customers within the next five years, compared with 56-64 per cent CIOs globally.
For the Indian CIOs, the three most important areas to focus for future are business intelligence and analytics, risk mitigation and governance, and virtualisation. Where as, business model change, technological factors and security factors are the key challenges. The other worries include globalisation, regulatory concerns, internal customers, budgets and people skills.
The study defines a successful CIO as the one who blends three pairs of roles — visionary and pragmatist, value creator and cost cutter, and business leader and IT manager.
“Given the fact that most Indian CIOs are not tied to legacy IT infrastructure, they find it easier to take bold actions that make an organisation successful. With competition intensifying across every sector, CIOs are compelled to ‘think out of the box’ and do things differently, more often than their average global counterparts,” said Nipun Mehrotra, executive sponsor of the study & vice president – General Business (Global Technology Services), IBM Asia Pacific.
However, Indian CIOs lag behind in crafting data into actionable information. “Though the Indian CIOs are not using enough data, the good news is the task ranks highest in their priority list,” added Mehrotra.
Definitely something to feel proud about. However, providing details on the sampling will give base and add more value to such surveys. Industry, sectors, regions, ethnicity of the CIOs would help understand the results better.
Content Guide
