Published on the 12/03/2014 | Written by Newsdesk
New research shows CIOs are too focused on back-end systems rather than the customer and need to manage the balance better…
Forrester Research says CIOs must juggle the conflicting challenges of focusing their resources on customer-facing systems to meet the needs of ‘digitally enabled’ customers while at the same time ensuring that back end systems are able to handle the demands placed on them by new ‘digitally enabled customers’.
According to Forrester senior analyst, Tim Sheedy, author of Forrester Research’s report ‘Benchmarking Australia And New Zealand Technology Budgets And Priorities In 2014’, IT departments are still too focused on the back-end systems and not sufficiently on the customer facing systems.
“It is good that CIOs are trying to fix their IT shops to be able to operate at the speed of the customer but that is a one to three-year process,” he said. “By then, if they’re not completely focused on the customer throughout that whole process, they will find they have a really efficient IT department that is not of any value to the business.”
On the other hand focusing solely on customer-facing systems could be equally damaging. “CIOs have lots of engaged customers and massive pressure from the business to respond at the speed of the customer. … But if they just do customer-facing systems, in five years time they will face a massive integration challenge and will spend massive amounts of money with consultants because they have not up-skilled their own IT staff,” Sheedy said.
However, he said that Australian CIOs were ahead of their peers in Asia Pacific in terms of their focus on the customer. “We have a report coming out on the Asia Pacific and it shows that Australian CIOs are much further ahead than their regional peers. They are spending on the customer whereas in Asia-Pacific they are talking about the customer but spending on traditional IC systems.”
According to Forrester’s Australian report, “The mobile mind shift is real — and it’s playing out in technology spending. Three of the top seven categories on which ANZ organisations will increase spending in 2014 are mobile-related. At least half of ANZ companies plan to spend more on smartphones (54 percent), tablets (52 percent), and mobile applications and middleware (50 percent).”
It adds: “ANZ organisations in both business and government are adapting quickly to the age of the customer. They’re considering any technology that has a clear customer benefit, and CIOs are striving to help their organisations succeed and their departments remain relevant. This is particularly the case with as-a-service offerings.
“In fact, the growth of as-a-service offerings — especially software-as-a service (SaaS) — cannot be understated. In 2010, SaaS represented around one percent of the IT spending of businesses in Australia and New Zealand.7 By 2013, this spending had risen to around five percent, and in 2014 Forrester expects the spending on all as-a-service offerings to be closer to eight percent.”
