Gartner released its 2009 Executive Programs CIO survey on January 14. It is a worldwide survey of 1,527 CIOs and was conducted between September 15 and December 15, 2008 (which means all bets are already off). Not surprising, the survey said IT spending budgets will be essentially flat (a planned increase of 0.16 percent) in 2009. We've known that since last July.
In addition to identifying spending plans, IT execs also said, according to Gartner:
"Enterprises expect IT to contribute results in an uncertain economy. (Enterprise) leaders have confidence in their ability to use IT to achieve results."
In the survey Gartner identified the top 10 business priorities for 2009 and ten top technology priorities. The bad news is that they do not line up with each other and they do not line up with what happened in 2008. Improving business processes is the top business priority. Business intelligence (BI) is the top technology priority. But both have been on the tops of the lists for years and look how that turned out in terms of IT helping to recognize the disaster that 2008 became.
Worse, ERP ranked second as a technology priority. But collaboration (5th) and document management (10th) should displace ERP if improving business processes is really your objective.
This is the real problem of which I've written here and here in not aligning technologies with value propositions. There are other disconnects in the list if anyone would like to dig deeper.
I think I have avoided the trap of saying business process management (BPM) is key to recovery from the current recession. It definitely will not be as long as CIOs think they can accomplish BPM with ERP and standalone BI.
-- Dennis Byron
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