CIO Report 2020

Welcome to the first ever Acora CIO survey! In the first half of 2020 Acora and the publisher of CIO magazine, International Data Group (IDG), surveyed IT decision-makers in large organisations across the UK.

We wanted to understand what the key priorities are for today’s CIOs, how CIOs view the biggest technology concerns of the day, and how organisations are spending their technology budgets.

An ever-evolving role

Technology constantly evolves and technology leaders are always adapting. That said, judging by the survey results, it appears that the role of the CIO has shifted far faster and much further in the last few years than ever before.

Digital transformation is without a doubt a significant driver as CIOs increasingly make decisions that have game-changing implications for the organisations that they work for.

Changing technology priorities

We know that the focus of technology expenditure constantly shifts. It’s no surprise that today, cyber security is
a major concern, and that an ever-increasing proportion of technology budgets is spent on cloud services.

In an interesting finding, our survey revealed that the customer experience is now critical from the CIO’s viewpoint. It underlines how today’s technology leaders play a very different role in their organisations. We take a deep dive into the customer experience in the second section.

Challenges of current IT models

IT strategies and management models differ, with companies making varying and sometimes selective use of tools such as cloud technology and managed services. What is the ideal IT model?

In our survey, 94% of respondents suggested that meeting business objectives using the current IT model will be either somewhat challenging – or indeed, very challenging. It suggests that, for many organisations, a shift may be appropriate.

So, in this report, we also examine IT models and what companies can do to tap the most out of their technology budgets.

Strategic IT

Finally, we consider our respondent’s views on strategic vs. operational IT, and to what extent organisations have the capacity to execute strategic IT. We also consider how companies can use a managed services provider to enable strategic IT.