Survey Says IT Execs Spend Too Much Time on Operations, etc.
ACTION ITEMS
London, England -- As CIN reported, a recent survey conducted among members of Cambridge Information Network (CIN) (an online community of more than 900 senior information technology executives), showed that 66% of senior IT executives would prefer to cut time spent on operations, human resource concerns and daily business support. Some 75% would like to devote more time to strategy and innovation.
More than 100 CIN members responded to the survey which asked for opinions on responsibilities, concerns, goals, challenges, compensation and level of job empowerment.
CIN asked senior IT executives how they actually spend their time versus how they would like to spend their time. Highest on the priority list was more time for strategic development and business innovation, cited by 75%. Finding time to interact with customers and business partners came in second, cited by 48%.
Reportedly, executives find themselves burdened with time consuming, day-to-day activities such as administration, people and personnel, operations, project management and daily business support. Of the seven primary activity areas on which CIN community members commented, no one area commanded greater than 30% of their collective time, the most time consuming was administration and project management at 20.4%.
In some cases these types of activities combined accounted for up to 55% of total time. Not surprisingly, more than 64% of respondents said they would prefer to spend less time, around 35% in total, on these types of activities.
Areas which the majority of IT executives may choose to delegate, such as technology research (10% actual time spent vs.10% ideal) and vendor relationship management (9% actual vs. 9.5% ideal) were lowest on the priority scale.
CIN asked members to respond to questions about professional and personal concerns. Professionally, 93% were preoccupied (69% extremely) with hiring, motivating and retaining quality staff personnel. The second professional concern (76%) was selection of the right vendor partners.
At a personal level, 70% of respondents cited the gap between their responsibilities and available resources (including time) to meet those responsibilities as the greatest concern. The lack of ability to influence strategic decision making in the corporation ranked second as a personal concern. Of least concern to executives was market competition and job security and growth potential of their positions.
When asked what they most hoped to achieve, an overwhelming 90% of CIN community members replied determining how best to support their organisation's business strategy with technology. Next priority was identifying business opportunities enabled by technology and third, a common area of frustration for the senior IT executive, achieving maximum return on IT investments. Of least importance was acting as an external advocate for the company.
Finally, CIN determined which business-related issues represented the community's greatest challenges. Managing the human resources needed to achieve business objectives was chosen by over 75% of executives, closely followed by aligning IT capabilities to business strategy. A majority of respondents cited creation of a standard (or unified) IT architecture. Half of the executives surveyed mentioned redefining the company to meet changing customer demands and the opportunities and threats posed by electronic commerce.
Areas of note that commanded little concern were the Year 2000 problem, outsourcing, competition, enterprise security, European integration and regulatory issues.
The majority of executives surveyed believed that they are fairly compensated when compared with peers both within their companies and in the industry at large. Surprisingly, however, the majority felt that IT was lower paid compared with non-IT executives both within and outside their companies.