Just weeks ago I wrote in the June edition of THINKRONIZATION that we were seeing / hearing a lot about levels of preparedness in IT to support a return to growth. For those that expect company growth to return, some are prepared for it, others are planning for it, and a few are still operating as if they are in survival mode.
Parlayed from its SHARE article outlining the importance of business integration / collaboration in future success of our organizations', another InformationWeek article came out in an edition that followed which continued the preparedness theme. Why IT Must Get Back Into Growth Mode also drew many of its conclusions from the 2010 Global CIO Survey. The survey points out a number of things about organizations that expect to grow in 2010, and for those that do, what types of budgets and projects are queued up to help drive growth.
As IT leaders are increasingly expected to play a role in innovation and product development are they provided the budget to do so? Per the survey, half of IT leaders saw their budgets rising this year, and two-thirds forecast increasing revenues. I'd expect these two numbers to move more in sync with one another given that improved collaboration implementations are planned by 40% of those surveyed and lead all other major implementation initiatives for the year. Making business processes more efficient leads the innovation plans of 48% of respondents, with introduction of new IT led products and services for customers the second most favored innovation category at 36%
Are you in an organization that charges IT with driving and supporting growth through product innovation, integration, collaboration? If yes, good. Your organization is pretty insightful.
Are you prepared with people, process, technology, and the all important budget, to support growth? If no, it's time to get going.
In my view these two articles, and associated survey, provide integration professionals the information required to make sure growth support requirements are met with the scaled resources to do so.
