Annual CIO and IT Leadership Survey finds that over fifty per cent of organisations shifted their entire business operations to digital during the pandemic.
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Almost two thirds received additional funding to accelerate initiatives
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Almost 80% of respondents implemented ‘quick fix’ solutions
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82% stated that business and IT leadership played a key role in improving ways of working across the business
LONDON, UK 28th January 2021 – Coeus Consulting, an award-winning independent IT advisory, today announced findings from its annual CIO and IT Leadership Survey 2021- ‘ACCELERATION’ Where are organisations on their digital journeys, and how can they accelerate their transformation?" The survey of senior IT leaders explored how they have had to urgently prioritise and accelerate programmes during the pandemic over the past 12 months.
View the survey here.
Remarkably, over half (53%) claimed they were able to implement a strategic shift of their entire business operations to digital and almost three quarters of respondents either strongly or generally agreed that acceleration helped them to digitalise more of their operations.
Half of organisations were still amid their digital journeys or in the planning stages when they had to re-prioritise and pause non-urgent initiatives to focus on operational continuity during the pandemic. In fact, 70 per cent of organisations surveyed prioritised end user solutions (EUS) such as remote working, 52 per cent prioritised operational stability, closely followed by cost optimisation (50%).
“The proficiency that businesses have demonstrated in their prioritisation and acceleration of critical initiatives is a huge triumph. Being able to re-direct resources and cutting down their time to market in digitalising the organisation is no easy feat, particularly in the throes of a global pandemic” said Ben Barry, Director, Coeus Consulting.
Despite this, the speed at which organisations were forced to adapt meant that short term and tactical business decisions had to be made, with over three-quarters (78%) of respondents stating they had implemented ‘quick fix’ solutions.
“Businesses will need to revisit these over the coming months to build on these capabilities with more permanent solutions for the future and ensure that all changes made in response to the pandemic are assessed to identify any tactical risks accepted and create a plan to mitigate, update or accept all of them” Barry continued.
As a result of deploying ‘quick-fix’ solutions, organisations were confronted with operational, as well as strategic difficulties including agreeing priority changes, implementing the solution and post implementation, each of which encompassed numerous challenges.
- Challenges in agreeing the priorities for 2020 included security, which was key for over half of the respondents. This was followed by governance constraints (44%), business risk aversion (37%), employee reluctance/education (32%) and board level resistance (22%).
- Fifty per cent of respondents cited cost of implementation as the biggest challenge, followed by delivery of bandwidth (42%), integration difficulties (41%) and lack of skills and expertise (37%).
- Post implementation challenges included respondents experiencing negative process impacts (53%) and increased operating costs (45%). Customer and user perceptions were also adversely affected for almost 40 per cent as organisations tackled uncertainty and their own internal changes.
