Making Sense of IT Perceptions and Realities
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Making Sense of IT Perceptions and Realities
Solution providers should not only be aware of what customers perceive as their IT challenges but also understand what their actual operations issues are. -
Major Business Challenges
Top challenges included standardizing and streamlining business processes (34%), too many manual processes (33%) and keeping up with demand for app development (31%). -
Most Important Changes Needed
Among the most important changes needed were streamlining operational processes (56%), followed by increasing standardization (38%), moving away from legacy systems (37%) and changing operational skills/roles (35%). -
The Failure to Communicate
70% of IT decision-makers feel the ability to link IT investments to key business outcomes is critical/very important. When making IT decisions, a full 68% said business goals take a higher priority over IT operational goals. But 47% believe their organizations are doing an excellent or very good job of communicating and demonstrating the impact of IT investments. -
Factors Affecting IT Strategy
What affects IT strategy? Nearly two-thirds (65%) cited heightened risk of security breaches, followed by stricter compliance/regulatory mandates (43%), greater end-user expectations (41%) and smaller IT budgets (39%). -
Major IT Investment Considerations
70% cited security—followed by improving customer experience (59%), managing costs (59%) and boosting operational efficiency (52%)—as key IT investment considerations. -
Importance of IT Security Today vs. Two Years Ago
Three-quarters (75%) said improving IT security is more important today compared with two years ago. Meanwhile, 51% cited managing costs, 49% the need to mitigate risks and 49% improving customer experience as being more important. -
Top Strategic Initiatives
Among the leading initiatives, Agile development and process automation tied, at 22%—followed by migration to IT as a service (21%), converged data center infrastructure (20%) and cloud/virtualization management (18%). -
Perceived Greatest Amount of IT Difficulty
Perception of IT difficulty can be daunting. Security tops the list, at 44%, followed by IT governance and compliance management, at 29%. -
Greatest Actual Amount of IT Difficulty
Regarding actual difficulty, process automation tops the list, at 49%, followed by application performance management, at 37%. -
Most Difficult Parts of an IT Project
Planning, at 41%, was cited as the most difficult stage; following that were build (36%), test (32%) and run (25%).
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Why Metrics Matter to the Channel It's clear that IT projects need to be closely aligned with business outcomes in order to succeed. However, the findings of a new survey suggest that sorting out perception and reality can prove challenging. Additionally, while security and compliance issues weigh heavily on organizations, in terms of actually managing IT, they are struggling more with process automation and application performance management, according to the survey of more than 100 IT and other executives conducted by IDG on behalf of Datalink, an IT solutions provider based in Eden Prairie, Minn. That's significant for solution providers because although perceived security and compliance issues need to be addressed to get an IT project off the ground, operational issues often wind up tripping up IT organizations more. As a consequence, solution providers would be well-advised not only to listen to what customers perceive as their IT issues, but also to understand what their actual IT operations challenges are. Not surprisingly, communicating often winds up being the biggest challenge. In fact, the survey finds that less than half the respondents said their organizations are good at communicating and demonstrating the business impact of an IT investment.