While 53 per cent of Australian CIOs report digital disruption is bringing very significant change to their business, driving them to create new business models and bring new products and service to market ever faster, skill shortages and a lack of enterprise-wide digital strategy are making it difficult to manage this pace of change, according to the Harvey Nash 2015 CIO Survey.
The survey, which was undertaken in association with KPMG, brings together the view of almost 4000 IT leaders across 50 countries.
Concerns over having access to the right skills are held by 52 per cent of Australian CIOs in 2015, up from 25 per cent in 2013. The number one most-needed skill is big data analytic skills, and demand for this is almost three time higher than development, the next most scarce skill.
Also highlighted in the survey is the growing importance of the role of the Chief Digital Officer (CDO). Thirty per cent of Australia CIOs now work with a CDO, and a further 3 per cent said they will hire a CDO in the next several months – this is up from only 5 per cent last year.
Despite the strong emergence of this role, there is still considerable variation in where responsibility for digital sits within organisations, but the figures show that IT is taking a stronger role in this area, and wresting control back from marketing departments.
For organisations with a CDO, 45 per cent have that person take full leadership of the digital strategy, with the remaining 55 per cent having the CIO, CMO or CEO taking the lead. The proportion of marketing departments that exclusively own digital is down to 18 per cent, from 37 per cent in 2014, and the proportion of IT departments owning digital is up to 18 per cent, almost doubling its influence from 2014. There has also been a 7 per cent lift in joint ownership between marketing and IT, and in these cases, 53 per cent of CIOs say the relationship between IT and marketing is ‘very strong’.
“What’s most striking about the results is the speed that change is happening,” said Albert Ellis, CEO of Harvey Nash Group.
“In the 17 years we have conducted the survey we have never seen a new role grow so quickly as we have the Chief Digital Officer. We have never seen demand for a skill expand so quickly as we have for big data analytics. As technology increasingly becomes focused on the customer, the IT, marketing and operations teams are increasingly working together in new ways. Sometimes it creates friction, uncertainty and skills challenges, but for a CIO with the influence, connections and technical ability to bring it all together, it’s an exciting place to be.”
When it comes to CIOs’ operational priorities, increasing efficiencies topped the list at 67 per cent, with business intelligence and analytics making the largest climb up the list compared to last year, with 54 per cent setting it as a top priority.
In line with increasing skill challenges, 42 per cent of Australian CIOs reported that they are increasingly using outsourcers to either free up internal resources or gain access to skills not available in-house, compared to 21 per cent of CIOs, who are using outsourcing to save money, indicating an evolving role for outsourcers. Over half (52 per cent) of CIOs plan to increase their investment in offshoring in 2015.
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