Accenture, the global management consultants and outsourcing experts, today claimed that corporate spending on information technology is to increase significantly over the next three years, with a 2.5 per cent rise predicted to be likely in 2005 alone.
Accenture’s research findings contradict previous surveys on the business community’s attitudes to IT investment, which had cited high-profile failures, such as Sainsbury’s £260 million write-off of its computerised supply system last year, for a growing antipathy between CEOs and their CIOs and the perception that IT projects consistently fail to realise the benefits they promise.
In a survey which Accenture described today as “more robust” than others, and which polled more than 300 senior business managers and IT executives in the UK and Ireland, 56 per cent of executives said that they expected an IT spend increase between now and 2008.
Although the study also found that a large proportion of both groups (56 per cent of business managers and 38 per cent of IT managers) believe that IT is under-delivering against investments, study findings generally indicate that the historic tension between business managers and their IT counterparts is diminishing.
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“Business and IT managers are beginning to get over the ‘us versus them’ mentality,” Andrew Morlet, of Accenture, said. The survey found broad agreement with both groups of executives (84 per cent of business managers and 76 per cent of IT managers) indicating that they believe that the better use of IT has been the principle driver of productivity gains over the past three years.
“Aligning IT strategies to business objectives is one of the most fundamental factors for deriving value from technology,” Mr Morlet said.
The study found that when business and IT goals are not aligned, IT projects are more likely to fail. For example, nearly one-third of executives reported IT project failures.
The vast majority of business managers (83 per cent) and IT managers (70 per cent) view simplifying business processes as a major factor in productivity gains, and 68 per cent of business managers and 63 per cent of IT managers view simplifying IT systems as a major factor.