Great IT expectations are achievable

Research released last month by the Economist Intelligence Unit suggests that worries about technology expectation gaps among manufacturing businesses are overstated. The report, 'Great expectations or misplaced hopes? Perceptions of business technology in the 21st century', sponsored by HP, argues that CIOs' fears – that modern consumer IT-based business systems can't live up to users' expectations – are off the mark. IT is, in fact, largely delivering the goods, according to the study. Indeed, of the more than 500 executives surveyed by EIU across EMEA, 84% report that technology investments aimed at delivering efficiencies have succeeded as planned. Fully 80% also say they have improved compliance, as expected, while 78% reckon IT projects focused on reducing costs have been similarly successful. Those are staggeringly high numbers for IT projects and they certainly fly in the face of any perceived failures. Interestingly, however, high-performing companies – defined by EIU as those with recent profit growth of 20% or more per annum – are even more positive, with one in four of their projects exceeding expectations, compared with less than 5% for those on flat or negative growth. All of which leads Denis McCauley, EIU's director of global technology research, to assert that concerns about IT consumerisation are only a distraction. "CIOs should certainly not ignore the impact of consumerisation on how technology is used in the business," he observes. "But they have bigger challenges – such as delivering on innovation – and technology-savvy employees should be more of a help in this endeavour than a hindrance." Other insights include that the technology generation gap is also overstated. Younger employees may be comfortable with new devices and social media, but senior staff turn out to be more knowledgeable about technology use in the business. And the value of such knowledge in high places is crystal clear: EIU's research suggests that firms with strong technologists in senior management positions are 10 times more likely to be high-performers than those where the top team is weak on IT. So what exactly are the real threats to IT? Turns out they are essentially two-fold. EIU finds that on the one hand, the fast pace of consumer technology is fuelling ever higher expectations of CIOs, in terms of adopting and rolling out technology. On the other, there is an increasing risk that companies may fall behind their competitors – and their customers. Time to forget worries around hyped IT expectations – and to focus instead on satiating the insatiable machine.